Ethereum developer unlocks $2 million of trapped tokens from 2016 ICO contract
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been a way for people in the crypto space to fundraise capital that involved users sending ethereum to a smart contract with the expectation of receiving a project’s tokens.
Despite the popularity of ICOs, a number of projects failed, were unable to meet fundraising goals, and then, for one reason or another, were unable to return investors’ capital. One such example was HongCoin, which aimed to be a decentralized venture fund across borders.
On Sunday morning, blockchain sleuth 0xFlorent announced unlocking 1,003.62 ethereum tokens, worth $2 million, in HongCoin’s 2016 smart contract, enabling the 48 initial investors to claim funds that have been trapped for nine years. Of the investors, two have so far claimed a combined 96.5 ethereum.
The contract held all of the investors’ ethereum and was meant to auto-refund the cryptocurrencies, but “a bug in the refund function quietly broke that, and the funds got stuck,” 0xFlorent said in an X thread.
The HongCoin recovery was the second one the ethereum developer has disclosed in the past eight days. Last Sunday, 0xFlorent said they unlocked over 19.3 ETH, worth $40,590, that were stuck in two old contracts.
As to whether 0xFlorent will unlock more tokens stuck in ICO contracts, the security researcher doesn’t know. “It’s not my main activity and I did it because I found a way to help people. That’s it," 0xFlorent told Sherwood News.
