Bitget Launches Bounty Program for Fund Freezing and Recovery, Offering 5% Each
Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, announced the launch of the bounty program: voluntary actions that directly lead to freezing attackers' funds can earn 5% of the frozen amount, and those that directly contribute to recovery can also earn 5% of the recovered amount. Exchanges, security researchers, and on-chain investigators are welcome to participate, and thanks were given to Circle and Tether for their swift freezing actions. Freezing or recovery resulting from court orders, law enforcement requests, and other legal procedures do not count towards the bounty, with eligibility and amounts determined by Bitget.
The platform has also listed Bybit's Lazarus Bounty as one of the submission channels and has publicly provided a real-time tracking panel, reporting interface, and attacker address interface. Circle blacklisted a marked Ethereum attack address, which holds approximately 170 ETH, about 218,000 USDT, and around 100,000 USDC; Tether subsequently added the same address to its USDT blacklist, locking the stablecoins, while ETH cannot be frozen by the issuer. The total amount stolen is still estimated at approximately $387.5 million on-chain, and the protection fund claims it will cover the financial impact on the platform. Most assets have been converted into currencies that are difficult to freeze at the layer level.
The bounty turns detectives and exchange duty rooms into profit-sharing contracts. Funds from the attack address enter a blacklist or custody, and then 5% is allocated to recognized contributors. Beneficiaries are those who can prove "direct contribution" as trackers and stablecoin issuers; the burden falls on attackers who have converted funds into non-blacklist assets like ETH, and bounty applicants who must self-verify their contribution chain. The event-driven aspect is the bounty terms, not full recovery.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
5% plus 5% turns "who first called to stop the address" into a quantifiable service. Excluding judicial and law enforcement procedures avoids turning police investigations into commission-based tasks and keeps the bounty for civilian nodes. Stablecoin issuers can lock contract balances but cannot lock ETH, so the actual results of the gratitude statement are measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the main holdings having left the freezeable layer.
The capital path is the protection fund outsourcing recovery. The Bybit channel explains that a shared hunter network was formed after the theft of the hot wallet where the head is located. Interfaces and panels reduce repetitive work, with final interpretation rights remaining with the stolen party; the bounty is not an automatically redeemable smart contract.
Benchmarking against Bybit's Lazarus bounty, Tornado sanction lists, and issuer blacklists: stablecoins are among the few that can be urgently stopped at the contract level. The industry phase is to first convert to non-freezable assets after theft, then discuss cross-exchange collaboration.
Structural changes belong to the recovery layer of the industrial chain reconstruction. Pricing power shifts from a single security team to reporters who can push issuers to blacklist. The mechanism is: freezing is priced, recovery is priced separately; legal actions have no rewards, only voluntary actions yield shares. ETH is not frozen, and the bounty hardly buys an urgent stop for it.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Only the issuer's coins can be blacklisted by the issuer
The bounty buys voluntary reports, not police documents
Freezing and recovery are priced separately to avoid just stopping without returning