Origin Protocol struggles to compensate exploit victims

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Origin Protocol–one of the three DeFi projects that experienced a flash-loan attack last week–is offering $1 million to any individual that can supply substantial information or evidence that leads to the return of customer funds.

“…realize that many of our users are not degens or whales. Many OUSD users are new to DeFi and their losses can be life-altering in highly negative ways,” said Origin in their updated announcement. 

We do not care if you return company funds or the personal investments of our founders. We believe you demonstrated superior knowledge in identifying vulnerabilities in our work. We ask that you act in a white hat manner and return all funds from OUSD users. The total amount of deposits excluding our founders and company funds is $6,159,000.00. If you do this, we will immediately stop all efforts to identify you or pursue legal action.

Will users get their money back?

The Origin Protocol team is actively looking for a way to compensate Origin user’s that lost funds due to the $7.7 million exploit.

“Over one or more payment installments, the company intends to provide compensation equal to 100% of the value deposited to OUSD by OUSD holders at the time of the exploit,” said Matthew Liu, co-founder of Origin. 

But from the looks of it, the Origin team has no real plan in place regarding how they are going to raise the money to compensate users. This is why Origin Protocol is hoping that the attacker will be identified or that the attacker will return the funds.

“We do not care if the hacker returns company funds or the personal investments of our founders,” said Kay Yoo, head of business operations and strategy at Origin. “Our highest priority right now is to recover customer funds.”

Beyond the project’s struggle to compensate users and restore their balances to pre-exploit levels, the OUSD stablecoin, which is supposed to be equal to 1 USD, has been impacted by the conflict the company faces. As of press time, one OUSD is equal to $0.16.