According to a report by Arkham Intelligence, several addresses hold significant sums blocked on various bridges in the blockchain ecosystem. Among these, an address that received 50 Ethers from Vitalik Buterin’s wallet holds over a million dollars tied up on the Optimism bridge.
Large amounts of cryptocurrency “forgotten” in bridges
According to a post by Arkham Intelligence, several dozen addresses have hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars locked up in various bridges across the blockchain ecosystem.
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There are dozens of accounts with 6-7 figures stuck in bridge contracts, forgotten about.
These include prominent DeFi whales and even an account connected with @vitalikbuterin
If you’re on this list, you may have misplaced a few million dollars.
Don’t worry – it happens. pic.twitter.com/YaLb5pjtzF
– Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) April 22, 2024
An address that received 50 Ethers around 9 months ago from a wallet identified as belonging to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is among those on the list. The address, last active a month ago, has over a million dollars tied up on the Optimism layer 2 bridge. It’s likely that this is a third-party portfolio of Vitalik’s.
Arkham also spotted a bridge transaction dated October 17, 2023 from an address identified as belonging to the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. In this case, $75,000 was left behind in the form of USDC, again on the Optimism bridge.
An address identified as belonging to thomasg.eth (ENS), meanwhile, has the equivalent of $800,000 abandoned on the Arbitrum layer 2 bridge. “It looks like you probably have $800,000 on the Arbitrum bridge. Happens to everyone,” Arkham commented wryly on this curious oversight. The bridge transaction dates back about a year and 10 months.
The prize for the oldest transaction, however, goes to Bofur Capital, an entity that has had more than 27 WBTC blocked on Arbitrum’s bridge for 2 years and 3 months now. At the current Bitcoin price, this is equivalent to around $1.7 million.
The address in question currently holds the equivalent of $14 million in various cryptocurrencies and has been active recently.
Transaction of 27.175 WBTC carried out by Bofur Capital
The reason behind these “oversights” remains unclear, however. As far as Vitalik Buterin or Coinbase are concerned, the sums we’re talking about are relatively insignificant, so it could really be a case of simple absent-mindedness. In the case of smaller wallets that have been in operation for some time, it’s a little stranger.
What the bridges we’re talking about have in common is that they’re based on Optimistic Rollups technology. If the cryptocurrencies we’re talking about had been transferred from Optimism (layer 2) to Ethereum (layer 1), a delay of 7 days would have been imputed to the transactions before they were validated, more or less justifying a possible oversight
