Researcher recovers 1,003 Ether from failed HongCoin ICO

A security researcher has helped unlock approximately 1,003 Ether, valued at about $2 million, that had been trapped in a failed 2016 initial coin offering for nearly a decade. The funds, belonging to 48 investors in a project called HongCoin, were recovered after the researcher identified a critical bug and worked with the original project team to safely release the assets.

The HongCoin ICO, which ran from August 29 to October 28, 2016, was pitched as a community-run venture capital fund. It failed to reach its fundraising goal, and its smart contract was designed to automatically refund investors' contributions. However, a flaw in the refund function prevented that process, leaving the Ether inaccessible.

The researcher, known online as 0xflorent, detailed the technical issue in a social media post. The refund mechanism rejected any investor whose token balance was higher than a global counter. Over the years, partial refunds had reduced this counter to 356, capping total possible refunds at just 3.56 Ether—far less than the total amount locked. The contract was written in an outdated version of the Solidity programming language, which lacked protections against integer...