“Christmas magic”: Chainlink user receives US$11,000 in donations after mistake
A crypto user who lost about US$50,000 to a smart contract error before the holidays is thanking the crypto community for donating US$11,000 to help him recoup the loss.
Earlier this month, Github user dawidkabani13 said he accidentally sent 4,005 Chainlink (LINK), then worth about US$47,000, to an immutable Aavegotchi (GHST) smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. He immediately Bitcoin Evolution realised that the token was not supported there and turned to the crypto community for any help to get his “life savings” back. The crypto user offered a reward of 1,000 LINK and tagged Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Twitter. He asked the latter if he could personally reverse the transaction.
Aavegotchi responded to the incident and set up a donation page to help Dawid get the money back before the holidays. On Sunday, the project’s co-founder Jesse Johnson reported that they had sent the crypto user around US$11,000 in tokens from more than 200 deposits on Christmas Day.
“Although there was no technical solution, we realised that charity at Christmas time could be a great opportunity to show the human side of crypto,” Johnson told Cointelegraph. “It really hit home with me because it’s honestly an oversight that could happen to myself or anyone else.”
The token’s price has also fallen
The missing LINK are likely to be “trapped in the Ethereum diamond forever”, according to Nick Mudge, the author of the smart contract. The token’s price has also fallen by about 2.5 per cent since Dawid reported the error on 11 December, reaching $11.41 at press time.
“The whole crypto community is helping me, people really want to help me, both mentally and financially,” Dawid said two days after he made the smart-contract mistake. “I have met many people who have also lost a lot of money in different ways. People are afraid to talk about it because they are ashamed. I think it’s worth sharing your problem, the vast majority want to help.”
Some crypto users have reported making similar mistakes over the years. But it’s not all bad. Although the immutability of many transactions often results in money being lost, some cases show the best side of humanity in the process. Last year, a crypto recruiter in Nigeria returned 7.8 Bitcoin (BTC), then about $80,000, that had been sent to his wallet by mistake.