A total of $31.5 million in BNB and BUSD suddenly disappeared that day, stunning the whole BSC community.
Joining forces to help the community
The BSC community and victims of the rug pull quickly contacted Binance on social media. Our security and legal teams immediately joined the investigation. The Binance security team discovered that the attackers distributed their loot across several addresses, attempting to complicate the analysis and hide the funds.
The BSC community, assisted by the Binance security team and other partners, investigated the scammer's activities and timeline and identified a suspect involved in executing the rug pull.
The legal team at Binance began the preparations for the legal pursuit of the suspect and any co-conspirators and sent a legal notice to the identified perpetrator, informing about the upcoming legal action. The attacker used the internal key in this exploit, which indicates that this might have been an inside job rather than an external attack.
Meerkat Finance repays over 95% of stolen funds
Shortly after the incident, Meerkat Finance launched a refund program under heavy pressure from the BSC community and its partners. Although the procedure is a bit complex and requires victims to interact directly with a new smart contract, as of this moment, at least 95% (~$30m) of users' losses have been recovered successfully, with ongoing distributions to remaining victims.
The largest recovery ever
This is historically the largest recovery of funds the Binance security team has participated in. We believe that every victim of this rug pull will receive their stolen funds back.
In the past, the Binance security team has helped numerous community members recover lost funds, including a near-complete recovery of funds lost in another DeFi scam, valued at an estimated $344,000 USD, in November 2020.
The Binance security team remains prepared to do everything in its power and legal options to protect Binance and its users and assist the BSC Community and our partner projects.
