Balancer Moves to Return 8 Million Dollars in Recovered Assets After 128 Million Dollar Exploit

Balancer has outlined a plan to return roughly 8 million dollars in recovered assets to users affected by a major security breach earlier this month. The decentralized exchange faced a serious exploit in early November, when attackers drained more than 128 million dollars from its V2 Composable Stable Pools.

In a proposal published Thursday, the Balancer team explained that the funds earmarked for distribution were recovered through a mix of white hat interventions and internal rescue efforts. Around 28 million dollars was salvaged in total, although nearly 19.7 million dollars in osETH and osGNO remains under the management of liquid staking protocol StakeWise.

[RFC] Distribution of Rescued Funds from Balancer v2 November 3rd 2025 Attacks

Author(s): @Xeonus, @0xDanko Summary This RFC proposes a framework for distributing funds rescued during the Balancer v2 exploit in early November 2025. Whitehat actors and internal rescue operations successfully recovered approximately $8M in user funds across multiple networks (with an additional ~$19.7M in osETH/osGNO handled separately by StakeWise). Users understand the inherent risks of DeFi and the community’s ongoing efforts to manage them through tools like the Terms of Use, Risk Remi…

BalancerXeonus

Balancer is known for its automated portfolio management tools and self-balancing liquidity pools that allow users to trade tokens and supply liquidity. The breach targeted a vulnerability in one of its pool designs, leading to one of the largest exploits DeFi has seen this year.

The proposed reimbursement model avoids socializing losses across the platform. Instead, the recovered assets will go directly to liquidity providers from the specific pools hit by the exploit. Distributions will be made on a pro-rata basis, using each provider’s Balancer Pool Token balance at the time of the incident. Payments will be made in kind, meaning users will receive the same tokens that were recovered.

The proposal also lays out rewards for the white hat rescuers who stepped in during the attack. Six contributors recovered about 3.86 million dollars and will each receive a 10 percent bounty, capped at 1 million dollars per operation. The largest single recovery came from an actor identified as “Anon #1,” who retrieved 2.68 million dollars on Polygon. Security researcher Bitfinding recovered more than 963,000 dollars on Ethereum, while smaller rescues were completed on Base and Arbitrum.

To claim their rewards, white hats must complete identity verification, sanctions screening, and know-your-client checks under Balancer’s SEAL Safe Harbor Agreement. Rescuers on Arbitrum have chosen to forgo their bounties by declining to identify themselves.

The plan includes a 180-day window for all claims. After that period, any unclaimed tokens will be marked as dormant and subject to a future governance vote on how they should be handled.