Symbiosis has recovered 15 BTC worth roughly $1.1 million after a hacker exploited its native Bitcoin bridge, adding a new twist to a growing run of cross-chain attacks.
The cross-chain liquidity protocol said the recovered Bitcoin is now held in a team-controlled multi-signature wallet. Its other routes remain operational, while the native Bitcoin bridge involved in the exploit is still paused.
The incident began Friday, when the attacker minted 46.1 billion tokens without sufficient backing through Symbiosis’ Bitcoin bridge. According to blockchain security firm Blockaid, the exploit ultimately generated about 4.3 WBTC, valued at approximately $336,000.
Symbiosis has not explained how the 15 BTC it recovered relates to the $336,000 in net proceeds attributed to the attacker, leaving the full financial picture of the incident unresolved.
Symbiosis Is Turning the Hack Into a Hunt
After an initial offer to the attacker expired Sunday, Symbiosis shifted its strategy. The protocol is now offering a 20% bounty to anyone who can provide information that helps recover the stolen assets.
The reward mirrors the original white-hat proposal made directly to the hacker, who did not return the funds before the deadline. Symbiosis also said it plans to publish a compensation framework for liquidity providers affected by the exploit.
The final size of those losses is still unclear. DeFiLlama currently estimates the incident at around $336,000, but Symbiosis has not yet released its own final accounting.
The episode adds to a string of bridge exploits that have continued to expose the risks built into systems designed to move assets between blockchains.
In June, Secret Network was hit by an “infinite mint” exploit that drained roughly $4.6 million. A month earlier, the Verus-Ethereum bridge lost 5,402 ETH, then worth about $11.6 million, after an attacker forged a cross-chain transfer.
That case ended with a partial recovery: the hacker returned 75% of the stolen funds after Verus offered a 25% white-hat bounty, while keeping roughly 1,350 ETH, valued at about $2.8 million at the time.
Symbiosis is now facing a similar question familiar across DeFi: how much of a compromised bridge can be recovered, and how much trust can be restored once the accounting is complete? For now, the protocol has some Bitcoin back, but the full cost of the exploit is still being worked out.