Nomad Bridge’s Hackers to be Rewarded With Whitehat-Themed NFT

‍Quick Take:

• Nomad Bridge is offering its exploiters a Whitehat NFT as a reward
• The first 50 hackers to refund are entitled to 100 $FF tokens
• Based on the precedent set by Poly Network, many consider this reward to be ‘worthless’

A creative way to reward the Nomad Bridge hackers through a White hat-themed Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is now being ridiculed by the crypto Twitter community. 

Earlier this month, the Nomad Bridge, which facilitates a cross-chain communication standard that enables cheap and secure transfers of tokens and data between chains, was drained of $190 million, the latest in a bout of bridge hacks recorded thus far this year.

According to the nature of the exploit, more than one person was involved in the attack with different amounts carted away by each unidentified exploiter. 

With a candid appeal to the hackers, some have started returning the funds back with more than $32 million returned thus far.

Typically, when such refunds are made after a protocol’s breach, the event is considered a Whitehat event and by the unwritten codes in the Web3.0 ecosystem, the hackers are entitled to a percentage of the returned funds.

In their own creative way, the Nomad team revealed on Twitter that the hackers who return 90% of the stolen funds can head over to Metagame’s platform to mint a Whitehat-themed NFT. 

In addition to these incentives, the Nomad team said the first 50 Whitehat hackers to return their stolen funds can claim 100 $FF tokens worth about $53.

Unpleasant Reaction from the Community

The announcement was received with a lot of backlashes directed to the Nomad Team with one Twitter user @hinzpak asking rhetorically why the Nomad team will even bother rewarding hackers with a worthless NFT.

Many consider the Nomad team to be unserious in their attempt to recover the stolen funds. To many, the so-called Whitehat hackers may be more discouraged to return the stolen funds seeing they have no robust incentive to do so.

Last year, interoperability protocol, Poly Network suffered the biggest DeFi hack at the time with the estimated loss surpassing $610 million. The Poly Network team opened a negotiation channel with the hacker and surprisingly, all of the stolen funds were returned.

The hacker was not only rewarded with the sum of $500,000 but he was also offered the position to serve as a security expert for the protocol. Rewards like this are what may likely move the community, not an insignificant sum or NFT that others in the space don’t value.