AAVE DAO votes for 'rescue plan' to save lost tokens

Some AAVE users who accidentally sent tokens to the incorrect code whitethorn soon beryllium capable to retrieve them, according to the substance of a connection passed by the AAVE decentralized autonomous enactment (DAO) connected March 10. The proposal, called “Rescue Mission Phase 1 Long Executor,” authorized AAVE developers to upgrade astute contracts that person been mistakenly sent tokens successful the past, causing the contracts to automatically nonstop the mislaid tokens backmost to their archetypal owners.

Here's your accidental to articulation the rescue mission. Vote present https://t.co/JJr6qhTKAv

— Aave (@AaveAave) March 7, 2023

The confirmed connection lone affects mislaid AAVE, LEND, Tether (USDT), Uniswap (UNI) and staked AAVE (stkAAVE) tokens that were mistakenly sent to the AAVE token contract, the LEND token contract, the LendtoAaveMigrator, oregon the stAAVE token contract.

It further authorized the squad to initialize a caller implementation for these contracts. The Aave DAO said that during the initialization, the mislaid tokens volition beryllium sent automatically to a abstracted AaveMerkleDistributor contract, wherever they volition afterwards beryllium sent to the owners.

The proposal’s substance emphasizes that these tokens volition lone beryllium transferred during the contracts’ initialization phase, stating: “To beryllium arsenic little invasive arsenic possible, these caller implementations lone see that other logic connected their initialize() function, with everything other remaining the same.” This seems to connote that lone tokens mislaid successful the past volition beryllium recoverable. Future tokens mistakenly sent to these addresses whitethorn beryllium permanently mislaid unless a caller connection is passed successful the future.

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Losing tokens by mistakenly transferring them to a token declaration is simply a communal occupation successful the crypto community. ChainSafe developer Muhammad Altabba has estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars worthy of tokens and Ether (ETH) are locked successful the Ethereum null code (0x0) and token contracts. One Ethereum idiosyncratic lost implicit $500 thousand worthy of wrapped ETH (wETH) by transferring it to the wETH token declaration alternatively of calling its “unwrap” relation arsenic they intended to do.

If a declaration cannot beryllium upgraded, tokens mislaid successful this mode are usually intolerable to recover.

By their nature, crypto transfers are expected to beryllium immutable. So adjacent if mistaken transfers tin beryllium reversed, attempts to bash truthful are sometimes controversial. In 2016, The DAO, an aboriginal mentation of today’s DAOs, was exploited for $60 cardinal worthy of ETH, which the investors successful the DAO presumably did not mean to happen. The bulk of Ethereum validators implemented a hard fork to reverse the exploit transaction, but immoderate validators rejected this move, creating Ethereum Classic successful the process.

The AAVE DAO ballot to rescue mislaid tokens passed was not astir arsenic controversial. It passed with much than 99.9% of the vote. Only 1 idiosyncratic voted against the proposal, utilizing a azygous AAVE token to bash so.