Tokens worth millions of dollars remain unclaimed in contracts related to cross-chain bridges. This is the conclusion reached by Arkham Intelligence experts, writes The Block.
Experts have found several similar addresses that belong to major players in the field of DeFi and NFT, as well as presumably with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
"There are dozens of accounts with six- to seven-figure sums, [...] which have been forgotten. If you are on this list, you may have lost several million dollars," the analysts wrote.
Among the mentioned examples is a wallet with ENS thomasg.eth, with ~$800,000 in the Arbitrum bridge contract. Funds have been left without movement for almost two years now.
The Ethereum address associated with Bofur Capital holds about 27 WBTC ($1.8 million), which also have not been moved from the Arbitrum bridge for more than two years. According to Arkham, the wallet contains assets worth more than $14 million.
Another address linked to Mike McDonald's X account could have "forgotten" about the $117,000 earned through the sale of CryptoPunks.
The publication suggested that such a case suggests that large holders of cryptocurrencies may face similar problems when tracking assets when transferring them across various blockchains.
Another wallet may be linked to Buterin. The co-founder of Ethereum sent 50 ETH ($1.05 million) to an address whose owner has not moved them from the Optimism Bridge for seven months.
"Vitalik, if you own this wallet: you have a million dollars in ETH," the experts wrote.
The journalists explained that unlike cross-chain bridges like Hop, where users automatically receive their funds on another network, in a number of other cases, scenarios are possible when they have to manually request assets.
If the user forgets to do this, the smart contract does not have the ability to remind him about it. As a result, there may be situations when cryptocurrencies remain unclaimed.
Recall that in 2022, Buterin called cross-chain bridges vulnerable to 51% attacks.
Earlier, the co-founder of Ethereum used the Railgun mixer, which is also used by North Korean hackers Lazarus Group and stressed that "this is normal."