A blockchain analysis company called Arkham has discovered numerous cryptocurrency wallets holding millions of dollars from two significant bridge contracts, which may be inadvertently left unused or stuck.
On April 22, Arkham announced in a blog post that many notable figures in the crypto world, such as Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, Coinbase exchange, and several DeFi “whales,” have sizeable funds locked in the Arbitrum and Optimism bridge contracts.
There are several overlooked accounts with balances ranging from six to seven figures in bridge contracts. Some of these accounts belong to notable DeFi investors and even one linked to @vitalikbuterin. If you’re among this group, you might have unwittingly left behind a few million dollars.
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) April 22, 2024
A noteworthy instance is that of a digital wallet holding 50 Ether from Buterin, valued around $1.05 million at present, which has been stranded in the Optimism bridge for approximately seven months. Although significant, this represents only a fraction of Buterin’s reported $789 million worth of cryptocurrency holdings.
Arkham pointed out several other cases where significant amounts of cryptocurrency were stuck in various blockchain platforms. For instance, there was a Bofur Capital digital wallet reportedly belonging to a Celsius debtor holding approximately $1.8 million in wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) in Arbitrum for over 27 months. Additionally, Thomasg.eth had around $800,000 worth of Ether frozen in Arbitrum. Coinbase attempted to transfer $75,000 in USDC from Optimism to Ethereum six months prior but has yet to retrieve the funds.
If the funds haven’t been claimed yet, their owners can still manage their wallets and might be keeping their assets there temporarily. However, due to potential weaknesses in smart contracts, cryptocurrency bridges have become popular targets for hackers. This was demonstrated by the Ronin bridge heist in March 2022, which resulted in a loss of $650 million for the victims, allegedly carried out by North Korea’s state-sponsored Lazarus Group.
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2024-04-23 12:40