Decentralized lending protocol zkLend has activated its Recovery Portal, allowing users affected by the February 12 hack to reclaim their lost funds.
Details of the zkLend Exploit
The exploit discovered on February 12 led to a loss of approximately $9.6 million from zkLend's liquidity pools. All withdrawals were immediately halted, and an investigation was initiated. According to Cyvers, the funds were transferred to the Ethereum network, with attempts to obfuscate them using the Railgun protocol. However, Railgun's internal compliance measures forced the return of the assets to the attacker's original address.
Measures Taken by zkLend
In response, zkLend offered the attacker a 10% 'white hat' bounty in exchange for the return of 3,300 ETH. Despite negotiation efforts, the funds could not be retrieved by the February 14 deadline. The platform sought assistance from law enforcement and security experts from Binance Security, StarkWare, and the Starknet Foundation. On February 20, zkLend outlined recovery plans, including full refunds for unaffected pools and partial compensation for hacked users, along with a claim in a dedicated recovery pool. Withdrawals are scheduled to commence two weeks after the Recovery Portal undergoes an audit.
Cryptocurrency Security Trends
The launch of zkLend's Recovery Portal comes amid a rise in cryptocurrency-related hacks, with February 2025 recording $1.53 billion in losses, an 18-fold increase from the same period in 2024. According to Immunefi's report, total losses for the year had already exceeded the entire amount stolen in 2024, reaching $1.6 billion. Centralized finance platforms bore the brunt of the attacks, accounting for 95.5% of total losses due to a single large-scale exploit, while DeFi protocols experienced eight incidents, comprising 4.5% of the total. BNB Chain and Ethereum were the most targeted blockchains, responsible for 72.8% of total losses.
The launch of zkLend's Recovery Portal provides an opportunity for users to recover lost funds, highlighting the importance of strengthening security measures in the cryptocurrency sector.
