zkLink Offers Up to 20% Bounty for Recovery of Nova Exploit Funds

This is a notably conciliatory recovery playbook: rather than framing the incident as pure adversarial, zkLink is effectively pricing cooperation and offering the exploiter a lawful exit, which can shorten recovery timelines when the attacker weighs legal exposure against a guaranteed cut. The terms are asymmetric and discretionary—eligibility and payouts rest with zkLink, so the 20% ceiling is not a commitment. Who this touches is anyone holding Nova-locked value and the whitehat community whose incentive to dig depends on that discretion. The open question is whether the exploiter engages at all, and whether discretionary bounty terms become a template for similar incidents.