After nearly being brought to its knees by a $235 million hack, WazirX just secured a vital shot at survival.
More than 93% of creditors have voted in favor of the Indian crypto exchange’s restructuring plan—clearing a key hurdle in efforts to recover from the devastating exploit, attributed to North Korean hackers.
The plan, now headed for court sanction in Singapore, promises partial repayments, new protections, and a phased return to operations.
In a statement shared with Decrypt on April 7, Zettai Pte. Ltd., the Singapore-based holding company behind WazirX, revealed that 131,659 creditors voted to support the proposed Scheme of Arrangement.
That accounts for 93.1% by headcount and 94.6% by claim value among the 141,476 eligible voters.
“We are grateful for the strong vote of confidence,” said WazirX founder Nischal Shetty. “This consistent support across our entire base demonstrates shared belief in our restructuring approach and recovery plan.”
With assets frozen and trust fractured since the July attack, Zettai warned in early 2025 that without creditor approval, withdrawals could be delayed until 2030.
The newly approved plan sidesteps that cliff as users will now receive between 75% to 80% of their claims in USDT, while the rest will be covered by “recovery tokens” tied to WazirX’s profits and the launch of a new decentralized exchange (DEX).
To ensure full transparency, the vote results were verified by Joshua Taylor and Henry A. Chambers, Managing Directors at global consultancy firm Alvarez & Marsal, who served as independent assessors.
The formal vote report will be shared with all creditors, alongside anonymized results, as per the company statement.
The $235 million WazirX hack
The vote brings a degree of resolution to a crisis that began in July 2024, when hackers, later linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, compromised WazirX’s multi-signature wallets and made off with assets spanning over 200 tokens.
The stolen crypto included Ethereum (ETH), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Polygon (POL, at the time MATIC), some of which was traced through formerly-sanctioned coin mixer Tornado Cash as part of a laundering effort involving 15,000 ETH.
The hack triggered a temporary halt to withdrawals and a criminal investigation by Delhi Police’s IFSO division, which arrested a man in West Bengal in November for allegedly opening a fraudulent WazirX account that enabled unauthorized access.
In February, CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta tweeted that WazirX’s lack of transparency around the breach had potentially endangered others.
“If WazirX and Phemex had disclosed all of their security breach details openly and transparently as Bybit did, the Safe{wallet} infra vulnerability could have been caught,” Gupta wrote, adding that, “The best way to protect the ecosystem is to learn openly.”
WazirX, meanwhile, has since shifted its crypto custody to BitGo and Zodia, introduced insurance coverage, and earmarked $12 million for legal costs and recovery.
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