The Berachain foundation has confirmed the recovery of approximately $12.8 million following a recent exploit on the Berachain Exchange (BEX). The foundation credited a white hat hacker, an ethical security researcher, for working directly with them to restore the funds. The blockchain chain is now live again, and normal operations are gradually resuming.
The incident had shaken confidence across the Berachain community, highlighting both the risks and resilience of decentralized finance (DeFi). Now that the team has recovered the money and prepared a plan to restore affected accounts, Berachain is rebuilding trust. The project is turning a crisis into a case study in transparency and security response.
Funds Returned and Operations Restored
The foundation announced that the HONEY mint and redeem functions have been unpaused, though BEX—the Berachain Exchange—remains partially limited. Swaps, deposits, and withdrawals are still paused as a safety precaution while the root cause of the exploit is being reviewed.
There were over 1,000 depositors affected across various liquidity pools, such as iBERA, and a smaller number in others like USDe. The team is now developing a system to track every affected wallet and redistribute the recovered assets accurately. The team disabled withdrawals temporarily for users whose deposits were not directly exploited. They took this step to prevent further risks until they fully understand the underlying Balancer vulnerability.
We are happy to confirm that all funds (approx $12.8m) from the BEX / Balancer v2 exploit have been returned to the Berachain Foundation Deployer. Chain is live.
We’d like to thank the white hat who worked with us to make this happen – we’ll ensure that…
The foundation said, "We’d like to thank the white hat who worked with us to make this happen," confirming that they plan to offer a bounty in appreciation. The team will clear the wallet associated with the recovery effort of any malicious label.
Ecosystem Status and Recovery Process
The Berachain Foundation reported that most of its core partners are ready to resume operations, except for one oracle provider that is still coming online. Oracles, which deliver real-world data to blockchain applications, have been under heavy strain following recent disruptions tied to Stream and Elixir. These issues have slowed progress across the ecosystem. The foundation expects the remaining provider to be live within hours and will confirm once block production resumes.
Bera core update:
The majority of key partners are ready to go with the exception of a single oracle provider. Given the recent issues around Stream/Elixir etc, oracle providers have been especially slammed over the past 24 hours. They are hoping to be live within hours. We…
In the meantime, Berachain has already verified and received pre-signed transactions from the white hat who recovered the misappropriated BEX funds. These transactions will automatically transfer the assets to the foundation’s deployer wallet as soon as block production restarts. This ensures that recovery proceeds without further action from the white hat. The team will update the community once they confirm the transfer, marking another key step toward full restoration.