A developer’s mistake has resulted in the loss of $10 million worth of Solana, causing a significant setback for the new memecoin project “SLERF”.
Notably, the anonymous developer was trying to burn some of the tokens using Solana’s web tools but mistakenly revoked the mint function, leaving investors without the promised SLERF tokens.
“I burned the LP and the tokens that were set aside for the airdrop. Mint authority is already revoked so I cannot mint them. There is nothing I can do to fix this. I am so f***ing sorry.” Tweeted the developer earlier on Monday.
A burn address is a cryptocurrency address that functions as a “black hole” for tokens, with sent tokens being unretrievable due to the unknown or inaccessible private key.
Further elaborating on the grave error, the developer attributed the mishap to a “mindless misclick” during the token burning process. Despite earnest efforts to rectify the mistake, including a desperate plea for assistance, the developer expressed the impossibility of refunding the affected investors.
“I’ve been up for 3 days preparing this and fumbled at the finish line. I’m sorry to the people who contributed to the presale, and I’m sorry to my team who were helping me for the past 3 days. I don’t see a fix currently. Don’t even think it’s possible.” He added.
The mistake has caused an uproar in the Solana community, with many investors expressing frustration and anger over losing their funds. The incident has also raised concerns about the security and reliability of Solana-based projects, with some questioning the wisdom of investing in such projects.
Notably, market speculators aggressively pumped the token, which is now listed on major exchanges like HTX and Bitget Global, driving its value up by over 5,000% before the token crashed after the news.
Nevertheless, despite the unfortunate incident, the SLERF team was willing to rectify the situation for their pre-sale buyers, tweeting, “We’ll continue to work tirelessly to correct this error and ensure that our pre-sale participants are fully compensated.”
Notably, the SLERF incident is not an isolated occurrence. Last March, an NFT trader mistakenly sent a CryptoPunk they had purchased for 77 Ethereum to a burn address, effectively destroying it. Later in July, an anonymous individual transferred 2,500 ETH, worth approximately $4.5 million at the time, to a burn address.
Interestingly, last Friday, another similar incident occurred when a crypto investor named BitcoinPalmer accidentally burned $1.36 million in Tether (USDT). Notably, the individual mistakenly sent Tether to the Tether contract address, effectively rendering them unretrievable.
At press time, SLERF was trading at $0.36 after a 44.23% drop in the past 24 hours.