Anyone returning at least 90% of stolen tokens will be viewed as a so-called white-hat hacker that seeks to spotlight vulnerabilities rather than make malicious gains, according to a statement from Nomad. The remaining 10% would effectively become the reward.  

“We will not prosecute white hats,” Pranay Mohan, chief executive officer of Nomad, said in the statement. “But we will continue to work with our partners, intelligence firms, and law enforcement to pursue all other malicious actors to the fullest extent under the law.”

Nomad is a bridge protocol, a tool for transferring tokens across blockchains to make different networks interoperable. Bridges have become one of the crypto sector’s weak points after numerous hacks – some $2- billion worth of tokens have been swiped from them in 2022, consultancy Chainalysis estimates.

The Nomad cross-chain bridge hack is the eighth largest crypto theft ever. Elliptic has identified over 40 exploiters with the most prolific gaining almost $42-million. Wallets used to initiate previous DeFi thefts are among those involved in this exploit. 

https://t.co/iH4SlwdJWE pic.twitter.com/IlPudKkzem

— elliptic (@elliptic) August 2, 2022

Nomad has recovered around $20-million of the $190-million so far, based on data from Etherscan, a platform for analysing the Ethereum blockchain, as well as the bridge provider’s estimates.

Nomad said it is working with crypto forensics specialist TRM Labs and law enforcement to identify hackers. Nomad has also partnered with crypto platform Anchorage Digital to accept and safeguard retrievable funds.

The attack on Nomad emerged earlier this week. The crypto industry suffered another black eye soon after when hackers targeted the Solana ecosystem on Wednesday, with thousands of wallets affected. BM