On 18 July 2024, WazirX lost $235 million when its Liminal multi-signature wallet was compromised, an attack later attributed to the Lazarus Group. The immediate consequence was blunt: 6.6 million users found themselves locked out of their own accounts for the following 15 months. In January 2025, WazirX froze a further $3 million in USDT connected to the stolen assets, through cooperation between US, South Korean and Japanese authorities. It was not until October 2025 that Singapore’s High Court approved a restructuring plan, backed by 94.6 per cent of creditors by value, that finally set out a path back to user funds.
If you are a WazirX user who has been reading updates about “restructuring” and “recovery tokens” without a clear sense of what either term means for your actual balance, you are far from alone. The gap between the language used in restructuring announcements and what lands in a user’s wallet has been one of the most confusing parts of this entire episode, and it is worth working through carefully before assuming either the best or the worst about what you will eventually receive.
What “restructuring” actually returns to a user
The Singapore-approved plan did not simply return users’ pre-hack balances. Instead, it applied a rebalancing formula: 85 per cent of each user’s January 2025 token values was made available through the restructured platform, while the remaining 15 per cent was converted into Recovery Tokens, or RTs. One billion RTs were issued in total, distributed proportionally according to each user’s share of the shortfall.
The critical detail is what an RT actually represents. It is not USDT, not a stablecoin, and not a claim with any guaranteed value. An RT only becomes worth something if WazirX itself becomes profitable again or successfully recovers further stolen assets in the future, at which point RT holders would receive a distribution tied to that recovery. Until then, an RT sits on a user’s balance sheet as a speculative instrument rather than a redeemable asset, and there is no fixed timeline for if or when that changes.
- 85 per cent of pre-hack token values made available through the restructured platform
- 15 per cent converted into Recovery Tokens (RTs), issued proportionally across 1 billion total tokens
- RTs carry no inherent value and depend entirely on future profitability or asset recovery
- No fixed date exists for any future RT distribution, since it depends on events that have not yet happened
Why the hack itself proved so difficult to contain
The Liminal multi-signature wallet that was compromised had been specifically designed to prevent exactly this kind of single-point failure, requiring multiple independent signatures before any transaction could be approved. The Lazarus Group’s attack reportedly manipulated the transaction interface itself, so that signers believed they were approving a routine transfer when they were in fact authorising the movement of the wallet’s entire holdings to an attacker-controlled address. This detail matters for how users should think about the incident: it was not a simple password breach or a phishing attack against an individual user, but a sophisticated compromise of infrastructure that was supposed to be one of the more secure custody arrangements in the industry.
That distinction has practical consequences for the restructuring itself. Because the failure sat at the level of shared custody infrastructure rather than any individual user’s own security practices, WazirX has not been able to point to user error as a mitigating factor, and the restructuring negotiations have proceeded on the basis that the platform bears responsibility for the shortfall. This is part of why creditors ultimately accepted a plan involving Recovery Tokens rather than holding out for a full cash restitution that the platform could not realistically fund immediately.
The 18-month gap between hack and first payout
The distance between the July 2024 hack and any meaningful return of funds illustrates how long a well-organised, court-supervised restructuring can still take. Fifteen months passed before the Singapore High Court even approved the plan, and that approval was itself the product of extensive creditor negotiation to reach the 94.6 per cent support threshold, not a guarantee of immediate implementation. Once the plan was approved, the operational task of actually restoring access to 6.6 million individual accounts introduced its own further delay.
WazirX initially told users the restart would take around ten business days. In practice, that estimate stretched into weeks and then months, a pattern common to large-scale account restorations where the technical and compliance work required — re-verifying identities, reconciling balances, and rebuilding the platform’s transaction infrastructure — is consistently underestimated in early public communications. By December 2025, users were reporting a split experience: roughly 55 per cent described having genuine, usable access to their restored funds, while the remaining 45 per cent said they were still effectively stuck in RT limbo, either waiting for technical issues to resolve or holding a balance that was overwhelmingly composed of RTs rather than usable funds.
How affected users can support or challenge the process
For users still waiting on full access, the realistic options fall into a few categories. The first is straightforward patience combined with active monitoring of the restructuring administrator’s official communications, since the process is court-supervised and updates are a matter of public record rather than something WazirX can quietly change without notice. The second is participation in the formal creditor process itself — objections, queries, or votes on any future amendments to the restructuring plan are handled through the Singapore court process, and users who engage through that channel, rather than solely through WazirX’s own support desk, tend to have a clearer view of what is actually happening.
Where a user’s situation involves a specific dispute — for instance, a balance that was miscalculated in the rebalancing, or an account that has not been restored despite meeting every stated requirement — a more targeted legal approach is usually necessary. General complaints submitted through a support ticket compete with millions of others; a specific, evidenced dispute about a calculation error or a wrongly withheld account is a different kind of claim, and one that can be pursued more directly, including through the restructuring administrator or, in more serious cases, through separate legal action in the relevant jurisdiction.
Where UsdtFreeze fits
We work with WazirX users navigating the practical gap between what the restructuring plan promises on paper and what has actually reached their accounts — disputed rebalancing calculations, accounts still stuck in the 45 per cent that has not been restored, or cases where a user’s RT allocation appears inconsistent with their documented pre-hack balance. We coordinate with partner counsel across 15+ jurisdictions, since the restructuring sits under Singapore court supervision while affected users are spread across India and dozens of other countries.
We ask for an NDA before details, given the sensitivity of account records and restructuring documentation involved. A cross-border case like this, sitting under Singapore court supervision while the user themselves is based elsewhere, is typically twice as difficult to progress without local representation, which is exactly why our jurisdictional pool of counsel includes specialists who can engage the Singapore process directly rather than at a distance. Our Standard engagement is $20,000 in ETH, with a $10,000 refund if the case is unsuccessful, and VIP hourly rates apply for cases requiring engagement with the Singapore restructuring process directly. UsdtFreeze is not a law firm. We are the middleman who helps a user work out whether their specific case is a normal part of a slow, large-scale process or a genuine error worth challenging. If your WazirX balance has not moved as the restructuring has progressed, get in touch, email [email protected], or message @unfreezeusdt.
FAQ
Can Recovery Tokens ever be converted into real USDT or cash?
Only if WazirX returns to profitability or recovers additional stolen assets in the future, at which point a distribution to RT holders would become possible. There is no guaranteed timeline, and RTs have no redeemable value in the meantime.
Why did the restart take so much longer than the ten business days WazirX initially announced?
Restoring access for 6.6 million accounts required identity re-verification, balance reconciliation, and rebuilding significant platform infrastructure, all of which routinely take longer than initial public estimates in large-scale restructurings of this kind.
What can a user do if their rebalanced amount looks wrong?
A specific, evidenced dispute — showing the pre-hack balance and how the current allocation was calculated — can be raised through the restructuring administrator’s formal process, and is generally treated more seriously than a general complaint submitted through ordinary customer support.