Amidst the altcoin euphoria, ZORA is among the big winners. The cryptocurrency surged in just two days, defying the $3.4 billion in Ether lost forever due to human error
Digital funds lost due to human error are a painful accounting figure for the cryptocurrency sector. This is especially true when the total amount is $3.4 billion for Ether.
$3.4 billion in Ether considered lost
Since their emergence, cryptocurrencies have established themselves as an innovative technology, with a few rules that must not be ignored. Indeed, blockchain has no “reverse” function. As a result, most human errors are paid for with the loss of funds that is considered irreversible. This reality is regularly highlighted with Bitcoin, where the amount of BTC lost is close to 4 million units, or almost 20% of its total available supply. However, the recent surprise discovery of 80,000 BTC that had been dormant since 2011 (worth over $9 billion) could well change the cards in this perhaps somewhat premature obituary.
But there are also other cryptocurrencies affected, such as Ether from the Ethereum blockchain. This is what Coinbase product manager Conor Grogan recently revealed on the X network, stating that $3.4 billion is permanently lost based on the price of Ether.
According to my research, at least 913,111 Ether has been permanently lost due to user error. This represents more than 0.76% of the amount of ETH in circulation, or $3.43 billion in lost funds.
Conor Grogan
A vastly underestimated amount
The figure is impressive. All the more so because it represents a spectacular 44% increase over Conor Grogan’s latest data, published in March 2023. At that time, 636,000 ETH were already missing, worth an estimated $1.15 billion (now $2.4 billion).
Within this list, the biggest losses still relate to the same errors, already identified in 2023:
- The Web3 Foundation and its 306,000 ETH locked due to a Parity Multisig bug;
- Quadriga and its 60,000 ETH lost due to a faulty contract;
- Akutars and its loss of 11,500 ETH during an NFT mint;
- The 25,000 ETH sent to a burn address by users.
This is already a huge amount, but Conor Grogan still considers it to be greatly underestimated. Indeed, these $3.4 billion in Ether do not take into account “all the lost private keys or forgotten Genesis wallets.” The total bill would therefore be much higher than expected. How can this be explained, and how long will it last?
The price of ZORA skyrockets
In the space of two days, the price of ZORA rose from $0.010 to $0.025. This considerable increase of 134% in two days shows the considerable enthusiasm surrounding the project.
ZORA’s market capitalization has surpassed the symbolic threshold of $70 million, with daily trading volume up 300%. The cryptocurrency has just celebrated its first anniversary, having been launched in June 2024.
The Zora project enables the tokenization of content (tweets, posts, etc.). In line with the tokenization projects that are currently booming, it achieved a milestone this week: integration with Base App.
Base gives Zora a boost
Base App is the main application for Coinbase’s layer 2, Base. Zora’s integration into the latter therefore allows the project to reach a larger number of users. It also highlights the seriousness of the project: Coinbase does not integrate just any application into Base App.
Zora’s arrival is therefore considered a pivotal moment for the project, which claims to have real-world use cases, enabling the monetization of a variety of digital content. In other words, Zora could be finding its audience. Base App is designed by Coinbase for a wide audience (content creators, artists, etc.).
It should also be noted that this integration comes at a time of growing enthusiasm for tokenization, with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) also making a strong comeback.
It therefore remains to be seen whether creators will really embrace these new possibilities, contributing to the rise of ZORA’s price in the long term.
