User who lost $50,000 in LINKs receives $11,000 from community: ‚That’s the magic of Christmas!
A user had mistakenly sent 4,005 LINKs to a smart contract that doesn’t support cryptocurrency: on Christmas Day, the community sent him more than $11,000 to help him out
A crypto user who lost around $50,000 before the Christmas holidays due to his own mistake has thanked the community, which donated $11,000 to help him recover from the loss.
Realizing that the protocol did not support transactions
In mid-December, Github user dawidkabani13 said he had mistakenly sent 4,005 chainlinks (LINK), worth about $47,000 at the time, to the immutable smart contract Aavegotchi (GHST) on the Ethereum blockchain. Realizing that the protocol did not support transactions for Immediate Edge that particular token, dawidkabani13 turned to the crypto community for help in recovering his „life savings“. He then offered a reward of 1,000 LINKS and tagged Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Twitter, asking if he could reverse the transaction.
Aavegotchi responded to his request by creating a donation page to help Dawid recover the funds before the Christmas holidays. On Sunday, the project’s co-founder, Jesse Johnson, reported that the user received about $11,000 in tokens on Christmas Day from over 200 different transactions.
Johnson told:
„Although there was no technical solution, we realised that a charity that fit well into the Christmas spirit could be a great opportunity to show the human side of the crypto world. This incident really struck me because, honestly, it’s a simple oversight that could happen to me or anyone else.“
„Dear friends of @aavegotchi and the #crypto community! I’m really impressed with the support you guys are giving me and my family. I have received a very substantial amount of money, which will help me recover from this incident. All I can say is ‚it’s the magic of Christmas!'“
According to the author of the smart contract, Nick Mudge, the funds are likely to be „locked into Ethereum forever“. What’s more, the price of the token has fallen by around 3% since 11 December, when Dawid reported the error, reaching $11.37 at the time this article was published.
Dawid, two days after the error, wrote:
„The entire crypto community is helping me, both mentally and financially. I have met several people who have lost a lot of money in various ways. People are afraid to talk about it because they are ashamed: I think it’s worth sharing your problem with others, the vast majority want to help.“
Cases like this are not uncommon in the crypto world: several users have reported making similar mistakes over the years. Although the irreversibility of many transactions has often led to the loss of funds, some of these cases bring out the best in people. Last year, a Nigerian crypto expert returned 7.8 Bitcoins (BTC), which were worth around $80,000 at the time, sent to his wallet by mistake.
