Balancer Protocol Proposes Distribution Plan for Recovered Funds After $116 Million Exploit

According to Cointelegraph, two members of the Balancer protocol community have submitted a proposal detailing a distribution plan for a portion of the funds recovered from the protocol's $116 million exploit in November. Approximately $28 million was recovered by white hat hackers, internal rescuers, and StakeWise, an Ether liquid staking platform. However, the proposal addresses only the $8 million recovered by white hat hackers and internal rescue teams, while the nearly $20 million retrieved by StakeWise will be distributed separately to its users. The proposal suggests that reimbursements should be non-socialized, meaning funds are distributed solely to the specific liquidity pools that lost the funds, with payouts made on a pro-rata basis according to each holder's share in the liquidity pool, represented by Balancer Pool Tokens (BPT). Additionally, reimbursements should be paid in-kind, allowing victims of the hack to receive payment denominated in the tokens they lost, thereby avoiding price mismatches between different digital assets. The Balancer hack was described as one of the "most sophisticated" attacks in 2025 by Deddy Lavid, CEO of blockchain cybersecurity company Cyvers, underscoring the ongoing need for enhanced crypto user safety as security threats continue to evolve. Despite top blockchain security firms auditing Balancer's smart contracts 11 times, the platform was still compromised, leading some crypto users to question the effectiveness of audits in ensuring code safety. Balancer released a post-mortem report on November 5, outlining the root cause of the hack: a sophisticated exploit targeting a rounding function used in EXACT_OUT swaps within its Stable Pools. The rounding function is designed to round down when token prices are input, but the attacker manipulated the calculation so that values were rounded up instead. This flaw was combined with a batched swap—a single transaction containing multiple actions—to drain funds from Balancer's pools.