ChangeNOW Returns $15M Worth of COMP

Flagged, Investigated, and Returned

On the 30th of September, the ChangeNOW risk management system caught a 45505 COMP exchange that seemed to consist of mistakenly drained COMP tokens. The transaction was automatically stopped by our in-house AML protocol, which gave us a reason to look into the situation. When we made sure the assets had been lost in the Compound bug turmoil, we started acting right away.

After settling the matter with the user, we got in touch with Compound’s CEO Robert Lencher. To the utter joy of both sides, we communicated the situation on time.

Our intent was clear – the only right thing to do was to return the lost COMP to Compound Finance. Today we sent back all the 45505 COMP that would otherwise be most likely lost for the platform forever. The user who approached us with the COMP exchange was supposed to get a 10% white-hat reward for their actions, but refused to take it, resulting in the assets being returned to Compound in full.

ChangeNOW for Communal Integrity

It’s not the first time ChangeNOW helps to restore justice and returns stray assets to their rightful owners. In 2019, we stopped several exchanges adding up to 500.000 XRP stolen during the GateHub hack. We have been improving our risk management protocol ever since – and here we are today, well-protected by our very own AML system. As it seems, the efforts paid out, and we are more than capable of keeping our users safe, along with helping other crypto projects retrieve their assets.

As for the COMP case, we believe that this is a textbook example of how well-oiled the collaboration between the user, the service provider, and the coin community can be. Bugs and leaks in the crypto industry are somewhat inevitable – the way we handle them is what’s important. Let’s not forget that there are real people behind every crypto transaction, and we want to believe that these people share similar values and agree to act on the basis of trust. And ChangeNOW most definitely does.

We'd like to give a well-deserved praise to our Head of Compliance, and also express our gratitude to the user for their honest collaboration.

Yours,

ChangeNOW team