Key Takeaways
- Wallet linked to Coinbase contains $75,000 worth of assets stuck for nearly six months.
- A wallet, which received 50 ETH from Vitalik Buterin’s address, has had over $1 million stuck in the Optimism bridge for seven months.
The latest report by Arkham Intelligence has revealed that millions of dollars of worth of crypto belonging to heavyweights in the crypto space are stuck in DeFi bridge contracts
A wallet that received 50 Ether (ETH) from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s address has had over $1 million stuck in the Optimism bridge for the past seven months. While significant, Arkham suggests this is likely a small portion of Buterin’s overall holdings.
Thomasg.eth, the pseudonymous founder of decentralized air transportation solution Arrow’s wallet had $800,000 worth of Ether stuck in the Arbitrum bridge for almost 27 months.
The report also identified a wallet linked to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase that appears to have attempted to bridge $75,000 worth of USD Coin (USDC) to Ethereum on the Optimism bridge six months ago, but the funds remain unclaimed.
Other affected parties include a wallet associated with Bofur Capital, potentially belonging to a Celsius creditor. This wallet has had a staggering $1.8 million worth of wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) stuck in the Arbitrum bridge two years and three months
As per the report, another wallet linked to nonfungible token (NFT) user Mike Macdonald has almost $117,000 in assets linked to CryptoPunks sales stuck on a bridge contract. Arkham adds that these funds may not be truly “stuck”, and that the owners could still retain control and have chosen to leave their holdings in the bridge contracts for safekeeping.
In its official post on X(formerly Twitter), Arkham has suggested that these instances can occur due to the nature of cross-chain bridges.
Cross-chain bridges enhance token utility by enabling cross-chain liquidity across different blockchains. Typically, a cross-chain bridge entails locking or burning tokens on one blockchain via a smart contract, and subsequently unlocking or minting tokens on another blockchain through a separate smart contract.
Cross chain bridges have also become a target for hackers due to vulnerabilities in their smart contracts or centralized validator sets. Earlier this year hackers stole $81 million from the Orbit Chain bridge.
