Fumbled transaction sends CryptoPunk into the void

Those who have been around crypto for a while will understand the pain of sending tokens to the wrong address or network and losing them forever. But how many understand what it feels like to lose someone rare and highly valued CryptoPunk as a result of a botched transaction? That’s the kind of pain an investor, Brandon Rileygoes through after permanently destroying his $129,000 NFT while attempting to “wrap” it.

Riley bought a piece for 77 ETH less than two weeks ago, and planned to keep it for the next ten years. However, on March 19, he decided to raise some liquidity by using CryptoPunk #685 as collateral, thus allowing him to release further potential from his valuable asset.

In order to interoperate with most modern NFT platforms, Riley first needed to upgrade the old CryptoPunk to the ERC-721 standard in a process known as “wrapping”. Effectively “wrapping” the legacy token into an ERC-721 NFT, which will allow it to be compatible with the wider Web3 ecosystem.

Doing it alone, Riley proceeded to follow some instructions posted online to guide him through the process of wrapping the punk. Only to misinterpret the guide, mistake the burn address for the proxy address, and transfer his beloved possession to the digital void.

Investor regrets going it alone

In a series of tweets, Riley notes, “I was told to follow the instructions exactly, so I did.” Only for the NFT to be sent to a burning address. When he realized what had happened, he became distraught and noticed “I just shouldn’t have tried this on my own, I guess.”

Crypto Twitter was sympathetic to the investor, with many blaming confusing interfaces and complex instructions for his loss. Many agreed that most crypto-related user interfaces needed to be improved to avoid such incidents in the future.

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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas are from personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended as educational material only. Individuals are required to research all products before making any type of investment.