On the evening of January 22, 2026, Beijing time, a reversal occurred in the attack and recovery game surrounding the Makina DeFi execution engine: after approximately 1,299 ETH was stolen by hackers, about 920 ETH was returned through a white hat framework. A typical DeFi security incident was transformed into a three-act drama of "attack—negotiation—recovery." The core point of contention also surfaced: does the SEAL program, which claims to provide a "safe harbor" for white hats, actually work in a real attack scenario? In this experiment, approximately 276 ETH remains unresolved, with the recovery path and final outcome shrouded in uncertainty, leaving an open ending for this seemingly "successful self-rescue" case.
After 1299 ETH was stolen…
● Event progression path: According to public information, Makina's DeFi execution engine was attacked in late January, with funds being transferred out of the protocol's control in a short period, resulting in a typical contract exploitation and asset outflow incident. The entire process did not involve a long warning period but was quickly completed from attack to escape, only entering the community's view when on-chain anomalies were detected and amplified by the media.
● Confirmation of the scale of theft: Reports from Planet Daily and Golden Finance set the scale of the theft at approximately 1,299 ETH, which became the benchmark for subsequent loss assessments and recovery effectiveness. For an execution engine still in its early stages, this magnitude is not a "systemic disaster," but it is sufficient to exert substantial pressure on the protocol's reputation and user confidence.
● Fund transfer and MEV Builder involvement: According to on-chain tracking by the two media outlets, the stolen funds underwent multiple splits and re-aggregations after flowing out, with part of it eventually entering a certain MEV Builder related address. The emergence of this role escalated the incident from a simple attack to a triangular game involving MEV participants, white hat roles, and the protocol, laying the groundwork for the subsequent plot of "returning funds relying on the safe harbor."
● Information still pending disclosure: It is important to emphasize that, as of the time of publication, the specific technical mechanisms, exploitation paths, and contract-level details of the attack have not been systematically disclosed, and Makina and third-party auditing firms have not provided a complete review. This means that the current narrative relies more on the flow of funds and public statements, while the technical truth remains to be disclosed and independently verified.
How the SEAL white hat safe harbor initiated self-rescue
● Program framework and incentive design: The SEAL white hat safe harbor program is essentially an institutional framework that reserves leeway for "gray behavior": after a security incident occurs, as long as the attacker returns most of the funds according to the rules, they can retain a bounty within a predetermined ratio and gain a certain degree of social consensus for "behavioral exemption." Its core mechanism is to drive attackers from pure black hats to "white hats" using predictable economic incentives and reputational buffers.
● MEV Builder returns funds according to rules: In the Makina incident, the MEV Builder, which held a significant portion of the stolen funds, chose to connect with the SEAL safe harbor mechanism and returned most of the 1,023 ETH it received as agreed. According to data disclosed by Planet Daily and Golden Finance, approximately 920 ETH was ultimately returned, and by "retaining 10% as a bounty," this participant locked in a delicate position between attack and firefighting.
● Quantitative reflection of real recovery effects: If we take the total stolen scale of approximately 1,299 ETH as a reference, the returned 920 ETH accounts for a significant portion of the overall loss, significantly compressing the space for "irreversible loss." As Planet Daily stated, this return amount "accounts for the majority of the total stolen amount," pulling back what could have evolved into a black hole of asset loss into a manageable and negotiable range.
● Gray areas and behavioral boundaries: However, this path of "turning legitimate" through the safe harbor also exposes the gray area between white hats and black hats: on one hand, the system encourages "correcting mistakes" after an attack, providing realistic options for asset recovery; on the other hand, it inevitably faces criticism for setting expected profit limits for certain attacks. The SEAL program attempts to delineate behavioral boundaries with clear bounty ratios and return requirements, but how to avoid being preemptively seen by attackers as an incentive tool for "hedging risks" remains a topic for ongoing industry discussion.
Fund return route: How 920 ETH returned to Makina
● Key return address: According to on-chain data from Planet Daily and Golden Finance, the approximately 920 ETH returned by the MEV Builder under the safe harbor rules ultimately concentrated in the address 0xc22F…8AB9. This address became the core node for the fund return in the entire incident, providing an ongoing "fund hub" for external monitoring of subsequent liquidation and distribution trends.
● On-chain disclosure and transparency: After the incident escalated, the Makina team chose to disclose the fund's whereabouts through on-chain annotations and public statements, exposing key links like 0xc22F…8AB9 to community scrutiny. This approach serves both as a passive response to doubts and as an active effort to shape a "verifiable" firefighting process, using transparency to counteract the trust erosion caused by the security incident.
● Real recovery rate after bounty deduction: Numerically, the MEV Builder returned approximately 920 ETH and retained about 10% as a bounty, meaning that the vast majority of the 1,023 ETH under its control has returned to the protocol's manageable asset pool. If we take the total stolen 1,299 ETH as a base, the current return amount covers over seventy percent of the losses, while the remaining portion constitutes the "substantial gap" of this incident, which cannot be completely erased both on paper and psychologically.
● Repair effect on community sentiment: The public and traceable return path provides the community with a relatively certain factual anchor: the funds have not completely evaporated but have been recovered within the framework of rules. This has a positive effect on short-term emotional stability and long-term trust rebuilding. However, as the asset distribution plan and user compensation timeline have not yet been made public, questions surrounding "who ultimately bears the remaining losses" and "when can normalcy truly be restored" continue to ferment within the community.
The tug-of-war over the remaining 276 ETH
● Unresolved gap: Between the 1,299 ETH stolen and the 920 ETH returned, the difference of approximately 276 ETH has become a long-term shadow over the Makina incident. This portion of assets represents both an unrecouped loss on the books and an unavoidable "tail risk" in the crisis narrative, making it difficult to define this seemingly successful self-rescue case as "completely resolved."
● Connection with RocketPool validators: According to Golden Finance citing the Makina team, they are "actively contacting RocketPool validators" to seek recovery paths for the remaining funds. This statement reveals that the funds may have been deeply embedded in a multi-party staking and validation network, making recovery no longer a simple point-to-point negotiation but rather a coordination and compromise involving a broader range of participants.
● Complexity of the game in the staking ecosystem: In the multi-party staking and validation ecosystem, the fate of the remaining 276 ETH depends not only on whether technical means can locate it but also on how different participants define "responsibility" and "cost." When funds are already tied to node earnings, staking positions, and even third-party agreements, any recovery operation may trigger broader interest adjustments, making the complexity of the game far greater than a simple narrative of a single attacker returning funds.
● High uncertainty of time and results: Currently, there is no authoritative commitment regarding the timeline for the return of this 276 ETH or the certainty of recovery results; all specific expectations regarding "when to recover" and "recovery ratio" carry significant uncertainty. For observers, a more prudent attitude is to view it as an open variable: maintaining attention to the progress of recovery while avoiding prematurely writing "full recovery" into evaluations of the project and mechanism.
From a single event to a new model of DeFi security
● Comparison with traditional attack cases: Looking back at past DeFi attack incidents, most narratives remain at the path of "funds stolen—project party passively staunching losses—losses become permanent," with few cases of returns relying on individual hackers' "conscience" or temporary negotiations. In the Makina incident, the pre-established white hat safe harbor mechanism allowed for the recovery of most assets in a short time, a result of "institutionalized rapid return" that is rare among existing samples.
● Demonstrative effect on the behavior of attackers and project parties: The implementation of the SEAL white hat safe harbor in this incident provides a replicable template for future interactions between attackers and project parties: after an attack occurs, the attacker can exit along a predetermined process while retaining certain profits, while the project party can exchange time and recoverable ratios for partial loss compensation. This model may quietly change some attackers' profit-risk calculations and encourage more protocols to design crisis response plans in advance.
● Long-term impact of Makina's crisis response on the brand: From the current information, Makina has demonstrated strong communication and recovery capabilities after the crisis erupted: quickly confirming the scale of losses, connecting with the safe harbor program, publicly disclosing the fund return route, and continuously signaling "still pursuing the remaining funds." In the short term, this cannot completely wash away the negative effects of the security incident, but in the long run, this performance in extreme situations is likely to become an important dimension for external evaluation of its governance capabilities and risk management levels.
● The prospect of "standardization" of the safe harbor system: The Makina incident provides a concrete model for the DeFi industry: when attacks cannot be completely blocked by preemptive defenses, how to reserve a second track for fund recovery through institutional design. It is foreseeable that mechanisms similar to the white hat safe harbor are expected to gradually evolve from experimental tools of a few projects to "standard security components" for more DeFi protocols, forming a multi-layered risk protection system alongside audits, bug bounties, and emergency funds.
New issues in DeFi security after the Makina incident
● Overall account of gains and losses in three stages: If we break down the Makina incident into three stages of "attack—return—recovery," the first stage exposed the vulnerabilities of the execution engine in protection and monitoring; the second stage recovered approximately 920 ETH through the safe harbor mechanism, compressing potential total losses into a partial gap; the third stage revolves around the recovery of the remaining approximately 276 ETH, extending the timeline in technology, governance, and multi-party games. Overall, this is an operation aimed at minimizing losses after a mistake, rather than a "minor episode" that can be easily brushed aside.
● Contributions and boundaries of the white hat safe harbor: The SEAL program's real contribution to reducing irreversible losses has already been reflected in the numbers, but it cannot and should not replace underlying security protections. More importantly, its boundary lies in that it can only address "how to recover more afterward," and cannot answer "how to prevent attacks from happening beforehand." Viewing it as a second line of defense rather than a panacea may be a more reasonable expectation for this tool.
● Three directions for future observation: Moving forward, the external community needs to focus on the evolution of three dimensions: first, whether Makina and the auditing parties will formally disclose the technical details of this attack, which could provide reusable risk lessons for the industry; second, the progress of recovering the remaining 276 ETH, especially the effectiveness of collaboration with multiple roles such as RocketPool validators; third, whether more protocols will introduce or modify safe harbor-like systems within their governance frameworks, institutionalizing them into risk management manuals.
● Thoughts on designing a "second line of defense": As the industry has generally accepted the reality that "attacks are difficult to completely avoid," what is truly worth questioning is how we can systematically design a second, or even third, line of defense—from technical isolation to insurance and reinsurance, from safe harbors to emergency funds, and to cross-protocol joint response mechanisms. The story of Makina is just a starting point; the real test is whether the entire DeFi ecosystem is prepared with more comprehensive arrangements before the next inevitable attack arrives.
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