Coinbase executive Conor Grogan has announced that at least 913,111 Ethereum (ETH) has been lost forever due to user errors. This amount, currently around $3.43 billion, represents 0.76% of the total ETH supply.
According to Grogan, these losses are attributed to irreversible transactions and inaccessible wallets. Additionally, including 5.3 million ETH (approximately $20 billion) burned in EIP-1559, the latest update on Ethereum’s pricing mechanism, more than 5% of the total Ethereum supply was permanently removed from the circulation.
Grogan noted that this loss is verifiable and only covers ETH that is technically “forever locked”;
Here are some examples of a large amount of eth lost:
- The Web3 Foundation has locked 306,000 ETH due to an error in the Parity Multisig contract.
- Quadrigacx lost 60,000 ETH due to a defect in the smart contract.
- Akutars lost 11,500 ETH in the failed NFT mint.
- Users are sending around 25,000 ETH to burn addresses for reasons not previously explained.
“This $3.4 billion figure is far below actual losses. That includes only technically permanently locked Ethereum, except for lost private keys and forgotten Genesis wallets,” Grogan said.
*This is not investment advice.