Thanks to a bug in a crypto marketplace network, a couple of crypto holders are now richer by millions of dollars. Now, the threat has sparked a debate of how to deal with digital money without rules and authorities. This comes after the founder of the platform openly threatened users who benefitted from the bug. A popular crypto platform, Compound, put out their routine update for a code that supervises user transactions.
However, little did they know that the update had a bug that would cause complete havoc. It ended up sending around $90 million in crypto coins to some accounts. On Wednesday, Compound Labs detected some unusual activity. But by then, the tokens had already gone to users’ accounts. Since they’d been distributed already, there was little they could do to get them back.
The founder of the company, Robert Leshner, rushed to twitter in an attempt to get back the funds. He started by persuading the Compound users to return what they received. Once that didn’t work, he used praise, but when that didn’t work either, he resorted to threats. He openly made threats against any user who didn’t give back the tokens.
He started by saying that users could keep 10 percent of the accidental funds as a bonus. However, he threatened those who wouldn’t return the money- saying he would reveal their identities. He tweeted, saying that if users had received an incorrect and large sum of COMP because of the Compound protocol error, they should return it. He then elaborated that otherwise, he would report the tokens as income to the IRS. He also said that at this point, most of them would be doxxed.
For context, doxing refers to revealing someone’s private information. In most cases, this is a person’s address or name. But in the crypto world, this is considered an enormous breach of protocol. After all, crypto users favor anonymity while giving up-regulation. Later, the founder of Compound, Robert Leshner, took back his statements. He explained that he realized it was a bone-headed statement to make. He thanked his followers for their support ad ridicule.
But on Friday, Leshner returned with another offer for the users who got the millions of dollars worth of tokens. He said he would reward the first five people to return the funds. The reward would be an NFT, that, when combined with the four others, could be redeemed. For what? For an actual meeting with the Compound founder.
On Friday, Leshner spoke to CoinDesk and said that it had been the worst day in the history of the company’s protocol. While most people assume that what happened was a hack, it was actually the opposite. Leshner said that the tokens were for future community members, and he hoped the users wouldn’t claim them. But by Friday, almost all of the tokens had been claimed.
