Berachain Foundation Recovers $12.86M From BEX Exploit, Resumes Operations

Excitement is building in the cryptocurrency community as the Berachain Foundation announced it has recovered $12.86 million after a major exploit on its BEX exchange. The issue was part of a larger event involving the Balancer V2 exploit that drained over $128 million across various chains.

Following a swift response, which included the resumption of HONEY minting and redemptions, the Foundation announced plans to gradually return the exploited pool funds to users.

Berachain Recovers $12.86M

On November 3, 2025, attackers exploited a flaw in the manageUserBalance function, allowing them to execute fake fees and withdraw $128.64 million from liquidity pools. The vulnerability had major repercussions for Berachain’s BEX, a fork of Balancer, due to its complex smart contract operations.

The core team quickly addressed the breach by initiating an emergency hard fork and distributing a patched binary to validators, isolating the compromised smart contracts and flagging the exploiters’ addresses. The swift action locked the stolen tokens within the network and redirected them to a Foundation-controlled wallet.

Additionally, Ethena paused USDe deposits, Relay blocked bridge withdrawals, and centralized exchanges suspicious addresses. However, the breakthrough came when the Foundation negotiated with the exploiter, a known MEV bot operator claiming to be a “white hat.” After halting the attack, the attacker agreed to return the stolen funds.

Community Reacts to the Rocorvery

The hacker pre-signed transactions for the return, which occurred after the hard fork, successfully transferring the full $12.86 million back to the deployer address without any ransom or rewards. The Foundation planned to mark the wallet as malicious and consider a reward for the cooperation.

Berachain’s community erupted in relief when news of the $12.86 million recovery spread on X. Users praised the Foundation for prioritizing user funds over ideology, which made the hard fork possible. One user, @AdamLeeBG, who could not contain his joy, called out “Berachain.”

Another user, @TEnterpriseSHP, commented:

“ Huge relief, huge thanks to the white hat and the team for acting fast Appreciate the transparency please keep updates coming.”

The community showed its trust in the Foundation’s actions and its commitment to making decentralized financial systems safer. However, the incident has sparked conversations about improving security measures and insurance protocols in the DeFi space.

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