Whale reclaims $74M in ETH locked in the ENS auction

cointelegraph.com 31 July 2023 10:20, UTC

Ethereum

After years of leaving 39,712 Ether ($ETH) locked at the Ethereum Name Service ($ENS) auction, a whale using the domain “darkmarket.eth” has reclaimed the digital assets and transferred over $119 million in $ETH to a new wallet.

After 2.7 years of dormancy, darkmarket.eth reclaim 39,712 $ETH ($74.17M) locked in the $ENS auction just now.

And transferred 63,734 $ETH($119M) out to a new wallet.https://t.co/OtXYRpcOhn pic.twitter.com/rXKpT1OzrA
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 31, 2023

Back in 2021, $ENS founder and lead developer Nick Johnson tweeted a reminder for the owner of the “darkmarket.eth” domain to reclaim their $ETH that was locked up in $ENS deposits from its first two years. The $ENS founder also provided a link that would allow those with $ETH deposited in $ENS auctions to reclaim their digital assets.

However, despite the reminder, the funds were reclaimed only after two years and five months. On July 31, on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain flagged that the funds were reclaimed and darkmarket.eth’s 63,734 $ETH, worth $119 million at the time of writing, was transferred to a different wallet.

According to Johnson, there are still over 100,000 deeds that remain unclaimed at $ENS. The domain service developer highlighted that these are worth tens of thousands in $ETH and urged users to check their own addresses and claim their funds.

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Meanwhile, at least two other dormant wallets worth millions of dollars have woken up this month. On July 19, a wallet containing pre-mined Ether worth $116 million moved its funds to a Kraken exchange address after 8 years of leaving it alone. The wallet was worth around $20 million at the time it was pre-mined, giving the owner a return of more than five times.

On July 24, a dormant wallet moved over $30 million in Bitcoin (BTC) after being left alone for 11 years. The address acquired the assets back in April 2012 when Bitcoin was worth only $4.92, meaning that the stash was only worth $5,108 back then.

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