Good Morning!

The Lendf.Me hacker returned the money.

The CEO of Lendf.Me announced yesterday that almost all of the hacked tokens have been returned. Read more about it here: Lendf.Me Update and Action Plan.

However, when you dig a bit deeper into various Twitter threads, it looks like the hacker was rather dumb in the execution of transferring the tokens. See here.

Was the pressure too high for the hacker?

Some people have been speculating that the community and Singaporean law enforcement pressured the hacker to transfer the tokens back. Again, I am not sure if this was a smart move since s/he is still liable for the crime, but now empty-handed.

Also, in the past, hacks such as the one Lendf.Me experienced, were done "in good faith". This means that the hacker never had the intention of keeping the money, but wanted to get paid for showing the vulnerability of the system. Usually, this does not happen in public as the reputational damage is very high and could even outweigh the actual vulnerability of the system.

Incident should help in the development of the existing system

In the end, this incident should make the Lendf.Me platform more secure, and it is a good example for new and upcoming projects on how not to make the same mistakes and how to build better more secure systems.

I also hope that the community is able to distinguish between a Ponzi scheme and a weakness in the system. When the news broke, many Twitter users exclaimed: "They ran with the money". This was obviously not the case.

Here is a case of an actual Ponzi scheme, which just surfaced yesterday:
A Chinese EOS-based wallet app reportedly shuts down, leaving $52M in user funds inaccessible

As long as greed has such a powerful hold on so many people, Ponzi schemes will happen over and over again.