HongCoin, an Ethereum token issuance project launched in 2016, recently recovered 1003.62 ETH. These funds had been locked for nine years due to a flaw in the contract's refund mechanism. The recovery was handled by white-hat security researcher Florent, and the amount involved is estimated at approximately $2 million, according to the article.
Long-term lock-up after refund mechanism fails
HongCoin failed to meet its fundraising target and was originally designed to automatically refund investors. However, due to flaws in the refund logic within the contract, the funds were never returned as expected and remained trapped within the contract for an extended period.
While examining this long-dormant contract, Florent discovered an integer overflow vulnerability in the administrator function. This type of issue was common in early Ethereum contracts; when a value exceeds its limit, it can cause a wraparound, leading to abnormal state judgments.
Restarting the refund process by exploiting a vulnerability
The report indicates that Florent bypassed previously invalid refund conditions by constructing specific inputs and reset a holder's balance status, thereby reopening the refund process. The article states that this process did not misappropriate or transfer funds; rather, it used the vulnerability to restore the refund functionality that was originally intended to be executed.
Following this resolution, the 48 original investors were able to recover their funds. Such cases of benevolent fixes utilizing contract flaws are uncommon on-chain.
Similar recovery cases have been handled before.
The report noted that this was not the first time Florent had performed a similar operation. On May 24, he also released 19,329 ETH from two other contracts, which was worth approximately $40,600 at the time.
One transaction involved 5.141 ETH from a failed token offering in January 2018; the other involved 14.190 ETH from a Liquality Wallet user. These funds originated from seven expired atomic swap transactions. Liquality shut down its app in 2024.
ETH price under pressure at the same time
AMBCrypto also mentioned in the article that ETH was at $1982.30 at the time of writing, down 1.85% in 24 hours and down more than 13% in the past month.
However, judging from the difference between active buying and selling volume in the spot market, the Ethereum market has been repeatedly switching between active buying and selling since 2026, indicating that the competition between bulls and bears remains fierce. The article states that buyers once held the upper hand, but their strength has weakened compared to previous highs.
Additional information:The media outlet also mentioned that recently, another attacker exploited a known ERC4626 vulnerability to steal approximately $152,000 from multiple lending markets.
