Gitcoin screws up transfer, sends $460K to unrecoverable address
Crypto developer platform Gitcoin has admitted to losing approximately $460,000 of Gitcoin (GTC) tokens after mistakenly sending the funds to an unrecoverable contract address.
On Oct. 6, project lead “CoachJonathan” posted details of the incident on the Gitcoin governance forum. He said the transfer of GTC from the treasury was intended for a merchandise, memes, and marketing budget proposal.
However, rather than going to a multisignature address, it instead went to a GTC token contract instead.
“This has rendered the funds stuck in the contract, with no way of recovering them,” he lamented.
A total of 521,440 GTC tokens were lost in the snafu. The coin was trading at just below $0.90 at the time, making the dollar loss an estimated $461,000.
Following the transfer, Gitcoin core developers were contacted to explore whether the contract has a withdraw function or was upgradeable. It was confirmed that neither was an option, so the funds have been flagged as lost.
In light of the incident, the team has shared plans to ensure such an error never happens again and create clearer accountability if there is another incident.
“Large token holders and multisig signers have a responsibility to be extra diligent when it comes to handling funds that do not belong to them (myself included),” he concluded.
Gitcoin researcher Umar Khan commented on the forum that the DAO could consider the lost tokens a reduction in GTC supply rather than a loss of treasury funds.
Observers said “Crypto UX is sadly really broken if this can happen,”
It seems that @gitcoin mistakenly sent ~521k $GTC (~$471k) to the token address instead of funding a workstream address
That is really sad to see. Effectively burning half a million $
How come none of the
