By
Bena Ilyas
May 3rd, 2024
Arkham Intelligence taps into several big whale wallets, funds of which are trapped into DeFi bridges such as Arbitrum and Optimism. Crypto exchange Coinbase also has $75,000 worth of funds stuck for nearly six months.
Arkham Intelligence has published a new report stating that several dozen crypto whale wallets holding seven figures worth of assets have been stuck on different decentralized finance (DeFi) bridge assets. One of such wallets belonging to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, holding over $1 million, has now been stuck for nearly seven months.
There are several such wallets whose assets remain unclaimed for now. Crypto analytics firm Arkham Intelligence noted that several notable whale addresses associated with prominent crypto individuals and companies like Coinbase have had their funds stuck on the bridge contracts for nearly two years now.
DeFi Bridge contracts are nothing but software protocols that facilitate the transfer of data and assets between different blockchain protocols. They help in facilitating interoperability within the DeFi ecosystem. But not all DeFi bridges work in the same manner! There are some cross-chain bridges allowing users to automatically obtain their assets on the other chain.
Furthermore, traders using these native bridges should retrieve their funds manually as there is no way that the smart contracts could remind users to do so.
Top Wallets Stuck with DeFi Bridges
Several notable wallets have been experiencing prolonged periods of funds being stuck in various bridges. For instance, a wallet associated with thomasg.eth has had $800,000 trapped in Arbitrum Bridge for almost two years.
Another wallet linked to Bofur Capital holds 27 wrapped Bitcoin worth $1.8 million, stuck for over two years. Additionally, a wallet related to NFT user Mike Macdonald contains approximately $117,000 in assets tied to CryptoPunks sales on a bridge contract.
Arkham recommended that the account owner investigate further, suggesting they might also possess the account receiving proceeds from CryptoPunks sales. Furthermore, a wallet receiving 50 Ether from Vitalik.eth has been overlooked for seven months, holding nearly $1 million worth of ETH on the Optimism bridge.
Additionally, Arkham Intelligence has also identified one more wallet belonging to the crypto exchange Coinbase. This wallet holds around $75,000 worth of digital assets and has been stuck for nearly six months. As per Arkham, Coinbase had reportedly tried bridging $75,000 worth of USDC to ETH and later forgot about it.
Arkham Research alerted the whales associated with these trapped and neglected funds, urging them to reclaim their assets if they had forgotten about them. They also emphasized to the community that such occurrences are common due to the characteristics of these native bridges.