Euler Finance, a DeFi lending protocol wracked by a nine-figure exploit last year, is hoping to rise from the ashes with the launch of its v2 iteration.

Euler deployed its v2 protocol on Feb. 22, describing the new platform as a modular lending protocol spanning two core components — the Euler Vault Connector (EVK) and Ethereum Vault Connector (EVC). The EVK allows developers to permissionlessly deploy bespoke lending vaults, while the EVC facilitates composability between vaults.

“Together, the EVK and EVC provide the flexibility to build or recreate any type of pre-existing or future-state lending product inside the Euler ecosystem,” Euler said. “EVK empowers developers to build ERC-4626 vaults with unparalleled freedom, eliminating constraints on governance, oracles, and upgradability… EVC allows seamless connection of vaults within the Euler ecosystem.”

Euler added that the new protocol enables the creation of synthetic and real-world assets, nested vaults, and permissionless rewards mechanisms.

The launch of Euler v2 follows a devastating exploit suffered by the protocol in March 2023.

Data from DeFi Llama shows the total value locked (TVL) in Euler crashing from $264M on March 13 to just $10.4M the next day. Bugs in Euler’s smart contracts allowed the hacker to make off with $136M worth of Lido’s stETH token, $34M in USDC, $18.5M in Wrapped BTC, and $8.8M in DAI. The incident ranks as the  seventh-largest on-chain exploit at $197M, according to Rekt.

However, the attacker later  returned $177 worth of Ether to Euler over the course of four weeks following the incident after negotiating to keep 10% of their haul as a bug bounty. The two parties entered into negotiations after Euler offered a $1M bounty for information regarding the hacker’s identity and threatened to engage law enforcement. The hacker had previously made off with $346,000 targeting a BNB Chain-based DeFi protocol.

The protocol entered a “hibernation” mode following the exploit and stopped accepting deposits after the exploit.

“The company has been heads down building what we believe will be the simply the best borrow/lend protocol available today,“ Euler said.