The online data analysis platform Arkham issued a statement yesterday, pointing out that millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies may have been forgotten in cross-chain contracts by dozens of DeFi whales and have not been claimed to this day. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and exchange Coinbase were specifically mentioned.
In the data compiled by Arkham, the following users were named as having unclaimed crypto assets in cross-chain contracts:
1. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum
Arkham stated that an address that had interacted with Vitalik Buterin had transferred 50 ETH to a cross-chain contract, and the funds have been stuck for over 7 months. The amount to be claimed is $1.05 million.
2. Coinbase
Approximately six months ago, Coinbase attempted to transfer $75,000 worth of USDC to Ethereum through the Optimism cross-chain bridge. However, the funds are still on the Ethereum base layer and have not been claimed.
3. Thomasg.eth, founder of Arrow
Thomasg.eth, the founder of Arrow, seems to have forgotten $800,000 worth of Ethereum on Arbitrum and has not claimed it for two years.
4. Bofur Capital
A related wallet of a user named Bofur Capital, which has the same name as a creditor of Celsius, has up to $1.8 million worth of WBTC on the Arbitrum cross-chain bridge, and it has not been moved for 27 months. It is currently unclear whether this is intentional or forgotten.
5. Mike MacDonald
A user named Mike MacDonald also has $117,000 worth of cryptocurrencies unclaimed in cross-chain contracts, with a duration of 5 months. According to Arkham, the associated wallet of this user has previously traded 5 cryptopunks, and these unclaimed funds are the proceeds from the transactions.
What is a cross-chain bridge?
The role of a blockchain cross-chain bridge is to connect the ecosystems of two different blockchains and enable the transfer of assets and data between them.
However, it is worth noting that unlike cross-chain protocols where users can automatically receive funds on another chain (such as Acoss), the majority of native cross-chain bridges (like the Optimism cross-chain contract mentioned above) require users to manually claim their funds. If they forget to claim, the smart contract will not remind them, which can easily result in loss of assets.
Further reading:
Tether releases USDT “cross-chain recovery tool” to solve blockchain downtime and asset freeze issues.
Related Reports
Performance, security, cross-chain: What are the recent changes in public chain infrastructure worth paying attention to?
Orbit Bridge hacked for $81.5 million, Orbit Chain ecosystem crashes.
What happened to cross-chain star LayerZero? Criticism of wstETH’s full chainization and controversy over SSL certificates.