Key Highlights
- Balancer posted a notice on September 3 urging the operator of an Ethereum wallet linked to the August 31 Balancer V1 exploit to cooperate.
- The notice offers a bounty in exchange for returning the exploited funds to the Balancer DAO multisig address.
- The wallet operator has until September 8, 2026, at 21:00 UTC to respond through Blockscan and begin private communication.
An on-chain notice posted on September 3 via Balancer, has called on the operator of a specific Ethereum wallet linked to the August 31 Balancer V1 exploit to cooperate in resolving the incident.
The notice states that the wallet is linked to the incident and presents an offer for the return of funds in exchange for a bounty, while stating a preference for resolving the matter without further escalation.
The message sets a deadline of September 8, 2026, at 21:00 UTC for a response. It directs any reply to be made privately through Blockscan at https://chat.blockscan.com. After verification, communications would involve SEAL911, Hypernative, and Balancer’s legal team.
Details of the on-chain notice
The notice reads in part: “We understand this wallet is linked to the exploit of Balancer V1 on Aug 31st, 2026. We are treating this as an opportunity for cooperation and would prefer to resolve this without escalation.”
It continues: “If you are willing to cooperate, reply to this message and begin contact procedures before September 8th, 21:00 UTC. If we do not hear from you by that time, we will assume you are unwilling to help make the liquidity providers whole and will escalate our response.”
The notice offers the return of funds to the DAO multisig address in exchange for a bounty, with details to be arranged privately. It states that upon verification that the returned funds meet the stated criteria, Balancer will not pursue legal action or investigative steps aimed at identifying or prosecuting the owner of the returning wallet based solely on the fact of the return.
If the offer is not accepted or no response is received by the deadline, the notice says all technical, on-chain, and legal measures will be used to identify and pursue those responsible for the exploit. In that case, any bounty would instead be used to reward verified informants who help identify and lead to prosecution of the attacker.
Transaction recording the notice
Blockchain records show the notice was delivered in a transaction with the hash 0xd4858faf506dd7164b5fa84a244ebc3657dcf9c7af671ec1329d7d4d084ccd4f. The transaction status is listed as ‘Success’. It was included in block 25898022 and had accumulated 225 confirmations at the time of the records reviewed. The timestamp is recorded as September 3, 2026, at 04:37:23 PM UTC.
The transaction was sent from the address 0x3877188e9e5DA25B11fDb7F5E8D4fDDDCE2d2270 to the address 0x338C7Ec9BefbB451d66Fd8A468c32184f5689a41. The value transferred was 0 ETH. The transaction fee was 0.0001826254448396 ETH, equivalent to approximately $0.46 at the time, with a gas price of 2.35463441 Gwei.
Background on the balancer V1 exploit
As reported earlier by The Crypto Times, security firm SlowMist flagged the issue on August 31, 2026, in a threat intelligence alert and estimated the loss at approximately $234,000. According to available details, an attacker drained a Balancer V1 pool by compressing its WBTC reserves until the deposit required to mint pool tokens rounded down to a single satoshi.
The exploit targeted code that had been deployed years earlier and was no longer actively maintained. The contracts involved are immutable. The same join and exit math has been forked across other DeFi protocols.
The on-chain notice frames the current outreach as an opportunity for the wallet operator to return the funds and avoid escalation, while setting a clear timeline and process for contact. All further steps described in the notice depend on whether a verified response is received by the stated deadline.
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