On May 11, 2026, a whitehat hacker returned approximately $190,000 to the Renegade protocol after exploiting its decentralized dark pool. This incident, flagged by Blockaid, involved the theft of funds amounting to $209,000 through a vulnerability in the Arbitrum-based platform.
According to reports, the hacker injected malicious code into a faulty function of the V1 dark pool, which allowed for the acquisition of 27 ERC-20 tokens. In a proactive move, the hacker complied with Renegade's request communicated via an onchain message, which asked for the return of 90% of the funds and permitted the hacker to retain 10% as a bounty.
Renegade confirmed the return on Sunday, detailing that the funds received included $84,370 in USDC, $27,885 in wrapped Bitcoin, and $23,950 in wrapped Ether. The hacker expressed that their actions, while ethically questionable, were aimed at safeguarding DeFi users' interests.