It was announced recently that a rather large hack of dForce, a Multicoin Capital-backed Chinese language decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, saw $25 million stolen, nearly cleaning out the accounts of the platform.

Data from DeFi Pulse suggested that the Total Value Locked in the dForce space dropped from a staggering $25M, all the way to $10.10K, registering a crash of over 100% in the charts as the attackers transferred the assets to two other platforms, namely, Compound and Aave.

This hammer blow to the platform, as well as the burgeoning DeFi space, was not taken lightly by the community, especially coming a few days after a Uniswap-based pool was hacked for a hefty amount of ETH and an Ethereum-based tokenized version of Bitcoin, imBTC, worth approximately $300,000.

However, it has now emerged that the hackers of dForce have decided to return all of the stolen funds, without much explanation as to why. However, it is suspected that a lack of thoroughness in covering up his tracks led the attacker to return the funds, in order to avoid further investigation.

This was further corroborated by metadata linked to the attacker offering much data about the attacker’s possible identity. By only using a VPN, and no decentralized network, an IP address was visible and that linked him to three exchange interactions. More so, it was possible to ascertain that the hacker was using a Mac due to the resolution and the system language.

This is insane. The lendf/dForce hacker is in the process of returning all the hacked funds to the admin:



$10M of ETH

$6.6M of USDT

$2.2M of HBTC

$750K of USDC

$381K of HUSD

$137K of DAI

$132K of MKR

$126K of PAX



Grand total of just over $20M.https://t.co/FLkJmv7m2A pic.twitter.com/6oaLgvnZMr — Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb) April 21, 2020

Testing time for DeFi

A lot has been made of the potential that DeFi offers in the cryptocurrency space as it looks to expand its offering. However, the newly heightened interest in these types of platforms has also shifted focus from bad actors onto the space. This is also aided by the fact that there are over $1 billion in locked funds recorded on DeFi platforms.

Now, there have been a number of recent thefts that have taken large sums of money from these less than well tested platforms. For example, the bZx protocol saw roughly $1 million stolen in February, with that being an “oracle manipulation attack.” The bZx team’s decision to suspend the network then drew criticism for being centralized.

It has led to the community calling for better security around the space in order for it to try and reach some of its potentials. If DeFi cannot overcome its weaknesses to exploitations and hacks, then it will quickly fall by the wayside in a space that is looking to garner a more positive and secure reputation