Developer Recovers $2M in ETH Frozen Since 2016 HongCoin ICO

According to developer 0xFlorent_, over 1,000 ETH (worth $2 million) was recovered on May 31 from a 2016 HongCoin ICO smart contract after being frozen for nine years. The original contract was designed to refund investors after the project failed to meet its funding goal, but a bug disabled the refund function and trapped the funds.

0xFlorent_ found a way to fix the contract logic, enabling 48 original investors to claim their ETH. HongCoin's team executed 41 unlock transactions to distribute the funds. According to Andy Yajin Zhou of BlockSec, such recoveries remain rare and cannot be assumed for other old Ethereum contracts with different vulnerabilities.