DeFi Bug Gives Users $90M, Founder Shares Plea for Money to Be Returned
Written by SOURCE on October 1, 2021
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Decentralized finance protocol Compound has been hit with a glitch that resulted in its users getting $90 million, and now the founder is asking for it back.
As CNBC reported, approximately $90.1 million in funds was sent out to the decentralized finance, aka DeFi, staking protocol this week. When company founder Robert Leshner tweeted about the news on Thursday, Compound’s native token, COMP, took a 13 percent hit before later gaining back some momentum.
“If you received a large, incorrect amount of COMP from the Compound protocol error: Please return it to the Compound Timelock. … Keep 10 percent as a white-hat,” wrote founder Robert Leshner in a tweet on Thursday. “Otherwise, it’s being reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed.”
Just two hours later, he followed up with another tweet. “I’m trying to do anything I can to help the community get some of its COMP back, and this was a bone-headed tweet / approach,” he wrote. “That’s on me. Luckily, the community is much bigger, and smarter, than just me. I appreciate your ridicule and support.”
The bug was seemingly introduced after Compound released a regular update on Wednesday, but it wasn’t long before some users noticed they had received money they otherwise did not own. “The new Comptroller contract contains a bug, causing some users to receive far too much COMP,” Leshner has since explained. “There are no admin controls or community tools to disable the COMP distribution; any changes to the protocol require a 7-day governance process to make their way into production.”
It could be up to a week before the issue is fixed, according to Leshner. It remains to be seen if he will follow through on his threat to report the money as income to the IRS on behalf of all of those who received the money but did not return it.
It’s not clear how many people this impacted, or how many people intend to return the money to the company.
“Alchemix [another DeFi protocol] had a similar incident a few months back where they gave out more rewards than intended,” blockchain security researcher Mudit Gupta said, per CNBC. “Almost everyone who got the extra rewards refunded the extra.”
