Coinbase software engineer shared his story of how he tracked down the owner of a dormant Ethereum wallet and returned their long-forgotten crypto assets.
The Ethereum Fork of 2016
Conor Grogan, a crypto enthusiast, and researcher, posted a thread on Twitter detailing how he uncovered $322,000 worth of dormant crypto for a stranger.
His discovery was based on the 2016 Ethereum fork that led to the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC). The fork was a response to the DAO hack, in which an attacker drained over 3.6 million ETH from a vulnerable smart contract.
The fork moved the funds from the compromised contract to a recovery contract, where DAO token holders could withdraw their ETH. However, the fork also gave every ETH holder an equal amount of ETC on the new chain.
According to Grogan, many people have not claimed their ETC balances since the fork, leaving them untouched in their wallets. He said he had previously recovered six-figure amounts of crypto for investors by notifying them of their ETC holdings.
He shared a screenshot of a previous conversation in which he informed a Twitter user of 23 ETH they were unaware of.
Grogan said he found a list of accounts that had not moved their ETC balances since the fork. He identified 20 addresses with over $250,000 worth of crypto in them.
He then tried to track down the owners of these wallets using various methods.
The 0x475 Address
One of the wallets that caught his attention had the prefix “0x475”. The wallet had an EOSDAC token, which was airdropped to ETH holders in 2018.
Using this information, Grogan was able to find the snapshot date and amount of the airdrop and link it to the owner’s EOS wallet. He then conducted a Google search for the owner’s name and found some legal documents that confirmed his identity.
Grogan contacted the owner via email and informed him of his ETC balance, which was worth over $322,000 at the time.
He also provided instructions on how to access and transfer the funds. He hoped that he had made the owner’s day with his discovery.
Grogan concluded his thread by saying that he found more Poloniex wallets with unclaimed ETC balances. He asked Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, to send him a direct message so he could share the full list with him.
Poloniex is a crypto exchange that was acquired by Sun in 2019.
The Lost and Found Crypto
Grogan’s story is not the only one of its kind. In an earlier report, he said that users had lost 636,000 ETH, worth about $1.1 billion, due to vulnerabilities in smart contracts. However, this amount does not include forgotten wallets.
Coinbase introduced a new tool in December 2022 to help its users recover over 4,000 unsupported ERC-20 tokens sent to its wallets.
The tool lets users recover lost tokens by providing the contract address and transaction ID. Ethereum’s account abstraction feature could also help users recover their crypto.
The feature simplifies the network and allows users to reclaim their crypto if they lose their private keys.
Grogan’s story shows that there is still a lot of crypto waiting to be claimed by its rightful owners. It also shows that there are people who are willing to help others find their lost treasures.
