KyberSwap's $48 Million Heist Hacker Now Demands Complete Control of the Company

By: Eliza Bennet

The individual responsible for the recent $48 million KyberSwap heist has now escalated their demands, beyond the return of stolen funds. The hacker seeks complete executive control over KyberSwap, a popular decentralized exchange (DEX), and has laid out comprehensive claims including ownership of governance mechanism KyberDAO, company's structure, profits, revenues, assets, and more.

In the on-chain message sent on Nov. 30, the hacker expressed their intentions to buy out the company's executives at a fair valuation and double the salaries of employees choosing to remain post-acquisition. Further, the hacker vows to engage in a complete makeover of the Kyber project to enhance the value of its tokens, which they currently consider worthless.

The gravity of this scenario has stirred considerable alarm and skepticism in the cryptocurrency community, fuelling debates around improving the security measures of decentralized protocols.

As of now, KyberSwap's leadership team has remained silent and provided no public response to the hacker's most recent messages. So far, from the $46 million initially pilfered, KyberSwap has managed to recover $4.67 million through the joint efforts of operators on the Polygon and Avalanche networks.