Venus Protocol, a lending platform on BNB Chain and other networks, confirmed it has returned stolen assets worth more than $11.4 million to investor Kuan Sun, CEO of Eureka Trading, after a phishing exploit earlier this month.
After conducting diligence checks, we are happy to share that as of Sep-06-2025 01:33:10 PM UTC, we have officially returned @KuanSun1990's positions worth $11.4M at today’s token prices.
— Venus Protocol (@VenusProtocol) September 8, 2025
Transaction tx linked below.
How the exploit happened
According to Venus Protocol’s official X post, Sun lost access to his funds on Sept. 2 after signing a malicious transaction on a fake Zoom client, which granted wallet approvals to an attacker.
At the time, the assets drained were valued at approximately $13 million, including stablecoins USDT, USDC, and FDUSD, based on CoinMarketCap valuations.
Venus stressed in its incident report that its smart contracts and core protocol were not compromised.
Recovery strategy and security coordination
Venus said it paused the platform 20 minutes after detecting the event, launched a rapid internal audit, and confirmed within 12 hours that the exploit was isolated to Sun’s wallet.
To recover the assets, the protocol executed a community-approved forced liquidation of the attacker’s wallet. Security firms PeckShield, Hexagate, and Hypernative Labs publicly confirmed on-chain that they had worked with Venus to analyze the attack and assist in localization of the tokens.
Victim’s response
Sun acknowledged the recovery efforts directly on his X account (@KuanSun1990), writing:
“Pausing the protocol was one of the hardest calls imaginable — it meant facing pressure, criticism, and risk. But they made that call in seconds. Protecting users came first.”
Community response and broader context
DeFi community members praised the speed of Venus’ response. The event highlights the persistence of phishing attacks in crypto: according to CertiK’s H1 2025 report, phishing incidents accounted for $410 million in losses across 132 events in the first half of the year.
Venus’ governance token XVS, which initially dropped on news of the incident, has since recovered. CoinGecko data shows XVS up 1.4% in the past 24 hours, trading around $6.28, back near pre-incident levels.
About Venus Protocol
Launched in 2020, Venus operates primarily on BNB Chain, with deployments on Ethereum, opBNB, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync. The protocol allows users to supply collateral, borrow assets, and mint the VAI stablecoin. Governance is managed via the Venus (XVS) token.
Roman Zaika
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