Key Takeaways
- Arkham intelligence has identified accounts with six- or seven-figure balances that have been sitting in Layer 2 bridge contracts for months.
- They include 330 ETH that has been sitting in the Optimism bridge that could belong to Vitalik Buterin.
- The idle assets are on Optimism and Arbitrum bridges going from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1.
Layer 2 bridges can be slow and frustrating, but most people don’t just give up and let their funds sit in bridge contracts.
However, Arkham intelligence has identified “dozens” of accounts with six- or seven-figure balances that have been sitting in Layer 2 bridge contracts for months, or even years. Among these is one that could belong to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Crypto Worth Millions Sitting in Arbitrum and Optimism Bridges
Of the idle funds highlighted by Arkham, the largest sum belongs a wallet tagged as “Bofur Capital”. This tried to send 27.175 Wrapped Bitcoin to Arbitrum from Layer 1 in January 2022.
Today, the crypto is worth $1.8 million, but its owner appears to have made no attempt to retrieve the funds.
Another address has had 330 ETH stuck in the Optimism bridge for seven months. Arkham pointed out that the address previously received 50 ETH from Vitalik Buterin. The analysts speculated it could also belong to him.
Why Funds Stay in Bridges
For Optimism and Arbitrum, bridging up and bridging down entail two different processes.
When moving funds from L1 to L2, native Ethereum tokens are locked while equivalent L2 tokens are minted in their place. When moving the other way, L2 tokens are burnt in order to unlock assets on the blockchain.
The process is simple enough in theory. However, users must input the correct details for the token contract on both sides and the recipient wallet address. If they don’t, the transaction will fail. Transactions can also stick if there is not enough ETH to pay for gas.
This appears to be the case with most of the incidents highlighted by Arkham, in which for whatever reason the transaction didn’t go through, but the funds’ owners have not acted to recover their balances.
Did Bridge Users Forget About Idle Funds?
Arkham suggested the users identified may simply have forgotten to claim their bridged assets.
Tagging Coinbase in a post highlighting a $75,000 USDC transaction, they pointed out that “for now it’s still in the Optimism bridge contract, waiting to be claimed on L1.”
In another case, the firm suggested NFT investor Mike Macdonald might not realise he had around 37 ETH stuck in an Arbitrum bridge.
The post said: “If you own the account that you sent five crypto punks to, then you might also own the account that received the proceeds after they were sold. Maybe take a look?”
James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
