Hopefully this also gets clarified as it’ll give us a better public understanding of the effective control of funds of the Singularity Campaign. @ThomasR or anybody else from Bifrost and/or Hyperbridge can shed light on the status of this issue please. It will help tons. Thanks.
"Hello everyone. I am an affected LP (liquidity provider) who lost funds in the Hyperbridge hack (80k).
I’ll be brief, since I have already tried many times in this thread to get through to the fair treatment that the actual leadership of Polkadot should provide in resolving this issue.
Just the facts. (Here are official facts and links to official sources.)
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Seed investment from Polkadot into the company Polytope Lab.
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Polkadot DeFi Singularity. One of the beneficiaries is the Polkadot ecosystem. And this is not an abstract figure – these are the same DOT holders who voted (and I understand this was after all checks, including technical security audits) to approve this program. The Hyperbridge bridge was recognized as the official and only bridge for operation.
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A publication with a description, and, as follows from the context of the article, with a guarantee of the bridge’s security. The publication appeared on the official Polkadot website.
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A publication announcing the launch of the program on the official Polkadot channel on X (Twitter).
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After the hack, complete distancing of the Polkadot leadership from this problem, and shifting all responsibility onto Polytope Lab (including the issue of compensating LPs for their losses), notwithstanding the facts cited above.
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The remaining undistributed DOT funds allocated for the program are returned to the treasury, and the affected LPs receive no compensation whatsoever. It is assumed that Polytope Lab itself will be able, using funds returned from Binance and other sources, as well as its own BRIDGE tokens, to compensate users for their losses.
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To this day, there is no information whatsoever about the funds withdrawn to Binance or other sources. And it is far from certain that anything will come of it.
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The BRIDGE token is not traded, and to claim that the company will be able to compensate for losses in 10 months – that is just guesswork.
The reputational damage to Polkadot stems not so much from the hack itself (many projects have been hacked and are now operating successfully), but from the fact that at a critical moment it “turns its back” on its users, although here the participation of the ecosystem (large holders, the actual company leadership) in discussing this issue is necessary. Other potential users, the media (including Yahoo Finance and others) – all of this is visible and being recorded.
The problem will not be solved by generic phrases like “Hyperbridge is a separate company, they were hacked, they bear full responsibility.” The facts say otherwise!!! The problem and the victims will not just go away!!"**
Disclaimer: I represent no one and hold no official role. These are only my personal opinions as a community member.
First, I’m sorry. Losing 80k is real, and I’m not brushing past that. Let me take your points one by one, because most of them actually point at Hyperbridge, not Polkadot.
On 1 and 2 (seed funding, the DeFi Singularity vote): funding a company and approving a growth campaign is not a security guarantee. A VC backing a startup, or a DAO funding a campaign, does not become liable when that team’s code fails. The vote approved a campaign, not an insurance policy on Hyperbridge’s contracts.
On 3 and 4 (the wiki page, the X announcement): that is promotion. Marketing a protocol does not transfer its bug onto DOT holders. The flaw was in Hyperbridge’s MMR verifier, by their own post-mortem. Not in anything Polkadot operates.
On 5 (leadership “distancing” itself): pointing at Hyperbridge is not turning its back on you, it is naming the party that caused it. Their code, their zero challenge period, their fourteen post-hack vulnerabilities, and twelve days before the exploit their own channels called the protocol “effectively unhackable.” That is on them.
On 6 (unused funds returning, LPs left empty-handed): the unused grant goes back because 1439 itself says so. It was budget for liquidity in pools that no longer exist, it was never your compensation. Your compensation is owed by Hyperbridge, which has already committed to repay affected users in BRIDGE.
On 7 and 8 (no clarity on Binance, BRIDGE untraded, “trust us in ten months”): here you are completely right, and this is the real fight. Vague recoveries and an untraded token are not good enough. But that pressure belongs on Hyperbridge and Bifrost, the two proponents who hold the funds, not on the DAO. Bifrost is asking the treasury for a fresh loan right now, which is exactly the leverage to demand a real plan, with numbers and dates, first.
So every point leads to the same address. If the community paid instead, Hyperbridge would walk away from its own loss and you’d become the bill the DAO settled so they didn’t have to. The way Polkadot stands with you is by making the responsible team pay, not by paying for them.
I hope you get every dollar back. I just want the demand aimed where it belongs.
@CryptoRobur so what is your take on the potential referendum to redistribute the vDOT allocated to the Singularity Campaign to the exploited LPs?
Would you agree with the other parties to start the disbursal of the already allocated vDOT for the singularity campaign for affected LPs?
Hello everyone.
A liquidity provider receives information about the opening of new DOT/“ethDOT” pools. The provider starts looking for information in response to their questions (especially regarding reliability).
They find the following:
The pools were created under a program by the Polkadot ecosystem aimed at improving brand awareness and attracting liquidity. The bridge for native DOT → ethDOT is the Hyperbridge, which has been approved by DOT holders, is claimed to be official and secure, and is also part of the ecosystem infrastructure. In other words, the Polkadot company launched the program, selected and approved the infrastructure, published information about the security of this infrastructure in its official sources, and is also a beneficiary.
An incident occurred: as a result of a hack affecting part of the approved program infrastructure, real users (including LPs) suffered real losses.
The question! What does Polytope Labs have to do with this, and where is their responsibility to these LPs? No document mentions that Polytope Labs bears responsibility in the event of a hack; the referendum was not held on their platform, and DEFI Singularity is not their program at all. This is Polkadot’s program with all its approved infrastructure.
There is no need to dive into the technical side of the issue—this is not a blockchain programming olympiad (with 14 bugs, MMR verifiers, etc.). Here we are looking at the issue of fair responsibility of the parties and the issue of compensation for the real losses of LPs, based on the input data, i.e., the information set out in the official documents on the basis of which the LPs provided their liquidity.
And these are bare facts, without loud statements about should/should not, is/is not, and
(that’s just a nice reframe…)
Hyperbridge is part of Polkadot’s infrastructure. And if, as you claim, Polkadot supports LPs by making the responsible team pay, we would like to see real steps with a guarantee of fulfillment, at least regarding compensation for a portion of the losses, rather than silence and dismissive replies along the lines of — 'that’s your problem with Polytope Labs
The company grows—native DOT rises; a problem occurs—the token falls. Positive news—the token rises. Here DOT holders are not about bank deposits with guaranteed returns.
If I am not mistaken, W3F is “registered” in Switzerland. So in many civilized countries (including Switzerland) there is such a fundamental principle as “Substance over form.” In this case, it is completely inappropriate to pull lines out of official content, “hide” behind code, shift all responsibility to another legal entity, etc.
I am not a native English speaker; I use a translator. I apologize in advance for any awkwardness in the text.
Thank you for reading.
@CryptoRobur You asked for substance over form. Good, let’s use exactly that, because the substance points one way only.
Substance means ignoring the wiki pages and the announcements and looking at who built it, ran it, and holds the money. So look. DeFi Singularity was proposed by Hyperbridge and Bifrost, not by Polkadot. Their own proposal names the curators who ran the campaign and paid the rewards: Polytope’s founders and Bifrost’s. They designed it, picked the pools, minted the vDOT, distributed it, and they hold the leftover funds today. It was never Polkadot’s campaign. Polkadot funded a proposal those two teams wrote and operated.
That’s also how OpenGov works. Anyone can submit a proposal. The community votes to fund it, on trust in the proposer. But approval is not authorship. A passed referendum is the strict responsibility of the proposer who runs it, not of the voters who funded it. If funding a grant made the community liable for what the team then did with it, no one would ever vote yes on anything.
So substance over form gives one answer: the party that built it, ran it, and holds the money is responsible. That is Polytope and Bifrost.
You’re right that “it’s Hyperbridge’s problem” said dismissively isn’t enough. Real steps with figures and dates are owed, by them. Hyperbridge has already committed to repay affected users in BRIDGE, and Bifrost is asking the treasury for a fresh loan right now, which is the leverage to make that plan concrete first.
The responsibility sits where the money and the control sit. That isn’t Polkadot.
Excuse me, but you are again pulling phrases out of context and putting labels on, what is the essence and what is not, shifted responsibility to the parties as it is convenient for you, devalued information from Polkadot Wiki, etc.
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Is Politoplabs an outsider, completely separate person in relation to Polkadot?
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In fact, under whose control (voting) was the program launched?
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Who promoted this program, who is the beneficiary of the program?
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Who approved the infrastructure and declared its safety?
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Whose information resources are the main criterion for accepting the proposal to participate in the LP program?
Here is the essence. Not individual phrases from which you can “mold” any convenient shape.
All of these are rhetorical questions…
That loan that the company Bifrost is asking for — it is just their loan. We have absolutely no right to even discuss this point until there are official statements
Dear all, dear Voters,
and also to @whiterabbit - I want to correct the factual errors in your argument directly, because they are shaping this discussion in a misleading way.
First, the central claim. No one has ever asked the Treasury to fund a bailout. Not once, not in this proposal, not anywhere in this thread. The proposal text is explicit: it requires zero Treasury funds. It requests only the disbursal of vDOT already granted under Referendum 1439, to the exact recipients they were always intended for. Repeating that this is a Treasury bailout is simply false, and I would ask you to stop presenting it that way.
Here is the actual situation, and it is simple:
The DeFi Singularity rewards were always going to go 100% to LPs. That money already left the Treasury under 1439. It is gone from the Treasury either way. The only open question is whether it reaches the LPs it was earmarked for, or gets redirected elsewhere. We are not asking for one DOT more than what we would have received had Hyperbridge not shipped the broken code, as confirmed in their own post-mortem.
Second, on scale. Even if every undistributed vDOT is disbursed, that does not even cover 25% of total LP losses. This is not LPs trying to be made whole at the ecosystem’s expense. This is the single most obvious, lowest-friction first step, and Hyperbridge and Polytope still bear responsibility for the remaining residual. The vDOT disbursal does not let anyone off the hook. It is the floor, not the ceiling.
Third, on the cost of delay, which is the part that should concern everyone here. The stolen ETH and DOT have lost roughly 30% of their value since the exploit, purely because nothing has moved. Yearn disbursed undistributed OP rewards to exploit victims within two days. Two days. Had the vDOT been disbursed promptly here, they would have covered close to 30% of losses. Today, in the best case, it is closer to 20%. That difference is value destroyed by inaction, not by markets.
On the broader point you raise: in every exploit there are voices that contributed nothing and have nothing at stake, who nonetheless work to delay and discredit recovery for the people who were actually harmed. I will not speculate about your motives. I will simply note that your factual claims are incorrect, they have been corrected, and repeating them after correction serves no one.
Why did LPs enter these positions in the first place? Because Hyperbridge was extensively promoted as secure, native Polkadot infrastructure by the largest actors in the ecosystem, individuals, institutions and companies alike. Those endorsements are documented. Every relevant post on X, news pages and official channels has been preserved.
We are asking for one thing, and it is fair: that rewards earmarked for LPs reach those LPs, the way Yearn and others handled comparable exploits, and that it happens promptly rather than negligently watching further depreciation. One third of the recoverable value is already gone. Continued blocking, delay and silence is not a neutral act. It causes quantifiable harm, and if it continues, it may carry legal consequences. We would much rather this be resolved fairly and quickly, as it has been elsewhere.
Honestly, we have spent enough time on this.
Look at who is here. Victims, delegates, a few community members, me. People who had nothing to do with the hack, giving up their evenings to sort out someone else’s mess.
And the two who caused it, who proposed this campaign, ran it, and still hold the leftover funds? Not a single line in this whole thread. Asked more than once. Silence.
So while we keep going in circles, the real question is simple: what are Polytope and Bifrost actually doing in the meantime?
It is their campaign, their funds, their users who lost money. They owe a plan, and they owe it here. Until they show up, the rest of us are just talking to each other.
For the record, I represent no one. This is just my personal opinion as a community member.
@seunlanlege
Hello, dear SAXEMBERG. I am ready to support the initiative aimed at a fair resolution of this matter, including the measure you have proposed.
Yes, that would be logical and correct. But unfortunately, from that side — silence…
Thanks for the reply.
Considering that doxxing publicly funds, positions, etc. is a bad idea that information cannot go public but we are willing to present that evidence to the biggest voters who can till the balance on this proposed WFC.
Best.
Yes, that would be very good indeed. We, the affected parties, thank you for your support and assistance in resolving this matter. I hope that other delegates, too, will be able to see in this a more ‘profound’ understanding and attitude toward the aid provided to the affected parties, rather than a ‘painted economy’ of funds that are quite insignificant for the treasury.
I fully support this Wish for Change referendum. It represents the only fair path forward in this situation, and a response is long overdue.
I therefore formally request the following:
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From Hyperbridge: an official response and a concrete compensation plan for the affected LPs, including a clear position on the disbursal of the undistributed DeFi Singularity vDOT.
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From Bifrost: a response to the question I raised above regarding control over the undistributed campaign vDOT.
The affected LPs have waited more than two months for clarity on funds that were always earmarked for them under Referendum 1439. A substantive response from both parties is the minimum that this situation warrants.
I am also a victim and lost a huge amount of funds. I therefore support the WFC. Its overdue. DOT was at 1.4 USD when we could distribute the vDOT. Now it sits at 0.8 - around 40% less.
All of the responsible parties out there - you are destroying our little remaining value by not acting on this. At 1.4 USD the vDOT would have covered 30% of our losses, now at 0.8 USD per vDOT its not even 20% anymore. Think about it. Its intentional value destruction and you dont even provide an alternative compensation plan so far. What happens here is a shame for every party involved. Hyperbridge, Polytobe, Bifrost - but also W3F and the whole Polkadot ecosystem.