UwU Lend offers a $5 million bounty to whoever catches its exploiter

Quick Take

  • UwU Lend has established a bounty worth $5 million in ETH for “the first person to identify and locate” the exploiter.
  • The protocol had offered to let the exploiter keep 20% of the stolen funds if they returned the remaining 80%, which the culprit did not do.

After the UwU Lend exploiter failed to return funds, the protocol is taking another initiative to catch the culprit.

UwU Lend has established a bounty worth $5 million in ETH for "the first person to identify and locate" the exploiter, according to an Input Data Message (IDM) on Ethereum, adding, "No recovery of funds or charges required."

Previously, the protocol had discussed establishing a bounty directly with the exploiter. The attacker could keep 20% of what they took as long as they returned 80%. If the exploiter complied, the protocol stated it would not pursue the matter further and not involve law enforcement regarding the incident.

The exploiter had until 1 p.m. ET (17:00 UTC) Wednesday to return the funds. But in a Thursday message to the exploiter, the protocol wrote that the "repayment deadline for the funds you stole has passed."

The exploits

The exploiter first attacked UwU Lend on Monday through a flash loans compromise that resulted in the loss of $20 million. On Thursday, the protocol lost another $3.7 million. Security experts believe the same culprit enacted both attacks, The Block previously reported.

UwU Lend is a decentralized liquidity market protocol allowing users to deposit, borrow or stake assets.

The Block reached out to UwU Lend for comment on the bounty.


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© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

AUTHOR

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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To contact the editor of this story: Jason Shubnell at [email protected]

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