Stars Arena recovers 90% of lost funds; exploiter receives quarter of a million worth of AVAX

• Stars Arena notified its users that about $2.22 million worth of assets had been recovered.
• The team also stated that it had written an entirely new smart contract, which will be launched soon.
• The exploiter that caused the loss of $2.9 million worth of funds will also be rewarded with $256,500 worth of AVAX as bounty.

Avalanche-based decentralized social network Stars Arena made headlines at the beginning of the month but became a victim of cybercrime not much later. The SocialFi project witnessed an exploit that led to the protocol being halted and redeveloped. Nevertheless, to the users’ relief, the lost funds have been mostly recovered.

Read more - Breaking: Stars Arena suffers major security vulnerability on its smart contract, loses $2.9 million

Stars Arena receives the lost AVAX

Stars Arena took to X, formerly Twitter, to announce that the project had successfully recovered about 90% of the funds that were stolen during the exploit. The exploiter managed to siphon about 266,104 AVAX worth around $2.9 million at the time of the exploit.

As a result, Avalanche price suffered a 13.53% decline since and is presently trading at $9.30. This resulted in the recovered funds still bearing losses to Stars Arena and the users. The value of the 90% recovered fund amounts to 239,493 AVAX, which is presently worth $2.22 million, down from $2.55 million.

Furthermore, the team had to pay the exploiter as well for cooperation and return of the stolen funds. Stars Arena stated that 10% of the lost AVAX was given as a bounty in addition to 1,000 AVAX that were lost in a bridge, coming up to 27,610 AVAX worth over $256,000.

New smart contract lined up

In addition to notifying the users of the recovery of the fund, the Avalanche-based SocialFi protocol also provided an update on the technical front. Stars Arena stated that their development team had written a new smart contract from scratch, and a full contract audit with Paladin Blockchain Security was being finalized.

Additionally, the protocol’s team stated,

“The funds secured to close the gap will be transferred directly to the contract following audit completion.

This move will be completed before the relaunch of the contract, which has been shut down for more than five days now.

Read more - Avalanche-based Friend.tech competitor, StarsArena, drained of $1 million; dApp says it's “at war”

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