ZKSync Recovers $5M in Stolen Tokens After Hacker Bounty Deal

ZKSync successfully recovered over $5 million in tokens after a hacker returned 90% of the stolen assets in exchange for a 10% bounty. The recovery, announced following the 72‐hour safe harbor window, saw nearly 45 million ZK tokens and more than 1,700 ETH transferred back to addresses controlled by the ZKSync Security Council. The initial exploit on April 15 involved a compromised admin key that allowed the attacker to mint approximately 111 million ZK tokens from unclaimed airdrop reserves, though core protocols and user funds remained unaffected. Matter Labs, the platform’s sole sequencer, implemented transaction filtering on compromised addresses as a temporary security measure. The recovered tokens are now held by the Security Council, and a governance decision on their disposition is pending. A final investigation report is expected to be released soon.