Ostium recovery plan repays 3,321 wallets in full, leaves 345 to choose

Ostium, the perpetuals protocol built on Arbitrum, has moved to repay 3,321 wallets that lost funds in its July exploit, while presenting 345 remaining affected wallets with a term sheet outlining their recovery options. The distinction between the two groups comes down to scale: smaller depositors are being made whole outright, while larger liquidity providers face a more nuanced path back to their capital. The recovery framework follows one of the more unusual DeFi exploits this year. On July 15, an attacker didn’t crack a smart contract or compromise a multisig. Instead, they infiltrated Ostium’s off-chain infrastructure and submitted fraudulent BTC-USD price reports, effectively tricking the protocol into releasing funds it shouldn’t have. Eight bogus transactions later, 23,752,746 USDC had walked out the door. The damage was confined to Ostium’s off-chain liquidity provider (OLP) vault, which is where users deposit USDC to serve as counterparty liquidity for traders on the platform. Trader collateral itself was never at risk, a small mercy that allowed Ostium to resume trading operations on July 23, just eight days after the breach, following a migration to what the team descr...