Starknet-based zkLend seeks return of over $8 million in ETH stolen from platform

ZkLend, a money market and lending protocol on zero-knowledge rollup StarkNet, has publicly acknowledged it was hacked for over $9 million.

It asked the hacker to keep 10% of the stolen funds as a “white hat” reward while asking for the return of the remaining 90%, which amounts to 3,300 ETH ($8.4 million).

After the exploit, zkLend suspended withdrawal functions to reduce further risks. Its team is actively investigating the methods the perpetrator used to steal protocol funds.

To resolve the situation by negotiating with the hacker, zkLend wrote a message to the attacker, stating it wouldn’t take legal action if the attacker returned these funds.

“Upon receiving the transfer, we agree to release from any and all liability regarding the attack,” it wrote in an onchain message to the hacker's wallet.

The specifics of how the zkLend hack was executed are still under investigation. However, based on general patterns observed in similar DeFi hacks, the perpetrator might have exploited a vulnerability within the smart contract code to drain funds.

ZkLend added it was actively tracking the funds and pursuing the identification of the hacker in collaboration with other teams.

DeFiLlama data shows that zkLend currently has a total value locked of over $1.2 million, with $14.6 million in borrowed funds on Starknet Layer 2.

zkLend raised $5 million in a 2022 seed funding round led by Delphi Digital and with participation from Three Arrows Capital and StarkWare.