The loss occurred as Alameda Research liquidators were attempting to close a borrow position on Aave but instead removed the extra collateral used for the position.
The Alameda Research liquidators are still having trouble getting money back for the debtors. The liquidators lost $72,000 in digital assets on the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending site Aave while attempting to combine funds into a single multisignature wallet, according to a tweet from the crypto analytics firm Arkham.
The assets were at risk of being liquidated because the liquidators attempted to settle a borrow position on Ave but instead removed additional collateral utilized for the position.
According to Arkham, the debt was twice liquidated over the course of nine days for a total of 4.05 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which creditors will no longer be able to recover. According to Arkham:
“Over the past 2 weeks, around $1.4M of tokens has been steadily returned to this central multisig from scattered Alameda wallets.”
However, significant sums of capital still remain stranded in over 50 Alameda wallets, the largest of which is worth over $14 million.The operators’ on-chain errors continue, according to Arkham.
For instance, the liquidators failed to withdraw $1.75 million in LDO from a vesting beneficiary wallet, and they also failed to withdraw “$238K or 250K tokens.”
The liquidators were forced to withdraw 10,000 LDO at a time to transfer to the central wallet since the LDO tokens were still vesting, which led to nine unsuccessful transactions.
According to Arkham’s investigation, there are still DeFi positions held in other Alameda wallets, which shows that the liquidators may be finding it difficult to control the situation.
According to rumors, Alameda Research’s problems started before FTX. Alameda Research nearly went under in 2018, even before FTX entered the scene.
Former Alameda Research workers also revealed that the trading algorithm at Alameda was built to execute a lot of deals quickly. However, the company was losing money as a result of making bad price movement predictions.
Additionally, it was disclosed that Alameda lost almost two-thirds of its assets in 2018 as a result of the decline in XRP (XRP $0.39) price. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried solicited money from lenders and investors on the promise of returns of up to 20% on their investment to save the company from bankruptcy when it was about to go under.