SecondFi offers $8 for every unrecoverable NFT lost in $21M hack

Cardano wallet firm SecondFi finally launched a recovery portal for victims of the neo-finance platform’s $21 million hack, but will only pay roughly $8 for every unrecoverable NFT taken.

SecondFi says victims looking to recover their assets will be assessed with an “incident snapshot” based on the June 2026 exploit of Cardano wallets. 

This snapshot will only act as an estimate, and SecondFi claims, “The final amount may differ.”

Unfortunately, for any NFTs that for some reason cannot be returned to victims, SecondFi says it will offer unlucky holders “a fixed amount” of 30 ADA, worth $7 and 60 cents.  

Victims are also required to use a newly created Cardano wallet for the destination of any recovered funds.

Recovery portal repeatedly delayed

Today’s portal launch was initially scheduled for August, but was pushed back several times across September. 

The portal allows victims to verify their affected wallets and submit a claim for any taken assets.

Incredibly, the project’s official guide recommends typing the private recovery phrase of an exploited wallet into SecondFi’s webpage, an extremely dangerous suggestion that puts users at risk of spoofing, man-in-the-middle, and a variety of other catastrophic attack vectors.

Their exploited wallet addresses are checked against the incident snapshot, where a tool provides “an estimated breakdown of any assets eligible for recovery.”

Victims must then provide a new Cardano wallet address as a destination for the recovered assets. A zero-knowledge proof is then created (this can take up to 15 minutes) before the recovery claims process begins (this can take up to five working days).

Read more: Mystery deepens over Cardano wallet’s $18.5M white hat hacker

Criminal hackers stole $2.4 million from Cardano wallets thanks to a “nonce derivation” issue that exposed users’ private keys.

Around the same time, a mysterious white hat hacker took $18.5 million from Cardano wallets as part of the platform’s security response. 

Since the incident, SecondFi announced that it was winding down operations to focus on asset recovery, while Cardano co-founder and SecondFi creator, Emurgo, gave up the handling of its Token2049 booth as a result of the hack.

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