Crypto exchange Coinbase will soon enable users to recover lost assets sent to the platform’s unsupported blockchains, including BNB Chain and Polygon.
According to the Feb. 27 announcement, users who sent assets to Coinbase accounts on BNB Chain or Polygon would simply need to provide their transaction ID and inbound Coinbase wallet address for the assets to be recovered.
“Historically, these assets have been unrecoverable, in part because our employees and support channels don’t have access to the private keys needed to reverse these transactions,” the exchange said. For assets under $100, no fee is charged for recovery efforts by Coinbase. However, retrieving lost crypto over that amount would incur a commission of 5%.
Like regular users, crypto exchanges’ wallets are typically multisig with automatic technical support for multiple blockchains and assets, even if the exchanges do not support tokens or networks on their user interface for reasons such as regulatory compliance.
While wrongly sent assets are theoretically retrievable, recovering them typically requires ample time, effort, and coordination from senior executives who are in control of exchange multisig wallets. Cointelegraph reported in 2022 that, at the time, Binance was charging the equivalent of $500 for each retrieval of wrongly sent crypto assets.
Since its inception, Coinbase’s recovery tool has retrieved $160 million worth of lost digital assets from the Ethereum blockchain. There are currently around 3,000 ERC-20 tokens mistakenly sent to Coinbase via BNB Chain and 800 such tokens sent via Polygon.
“We’re continuously investigating and expanding the scope of this feature to support additional assets and networks," Coinbase wrote. "Due to the technical complexities surrounding the recovery of unsupported assets, we can’t guarantee that any particular asset will be eligible in the future.”
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