The ERC-20 token tBTC was disabled for 10 days and there is no known official reason. The leader of the project Matt Luongo said that they are helping users to withdraw their funds.
The tBTC project, which has a 1:1 parity with Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain, was temporarily suspended from the mainnet. This happened two days after its launch and there is no known official reason for its cancellation.
Developer Matt Luongo, Founder, and CEO of the startup Thesis, reported on May 18th the suspension of deposits for 10 days until the team of programmers solves a possible coding problem.
According to what Luongo wrote on his Twitter account, he believes that the startup can do that in a matter of 1 or 2 days. Even though they have already fixed the problem in the code, they do not want the community to know until all the funds are withdrawn. He said that they are helping users to recover their funds in Discord. He explained that there are seven Bitcoin-pegged tokens, of a maximum of 11 BTC that there used to be. He recommended that the community that has tBTC visit https://chat.tbtc.network since they have the necessary equipment to make everything work well.
Regarding the funds kept on the platform, Luongo said that they are secure at the moment. However, he warned that they might not be unless they are withdrawn within the 10-day pause extension.
Regarding the technical details that led to the departure of the token from the mainnet, they reported that the community will receive a report when the developers confirm the data. This would leave an open range of possible causes leading to the temporary suspension of the project.
The ERC-20 token tBTC was launched the week of May 11th to 17th but was activated on May 16th on the Ethereum network. The project also includes startups Keep Network and Summa, where the detection of the problem with the token occurred.
The same as with other cryptocurrency-pegged token projects on the Ethereum network, the developers seek to allow users, particularly those of Bitcoin, to access decentralized financial (DeFi) applications that run on the aforementioned smart contract blockchain.
These types of initiatives have aroused controversy in the community due to their support methods. In August of last year, users of such services were requested to trust the tBTC developers’ honesty, an opinion that Udi Weithermer and Preston Byrne shared. On that occasion, Byrne said that he had sent his BTC to an address that he did not control and that he obtained a terrible exposure to ETH, which is worth 1 BTC according to a trusted oracle.
More recently, in April of this year, a new tokenized version of Bitcoin was also reported, this time on the Tezos blockchain. The conception of tzBTC also occurred so that there would be a type of bridge or link between Bitcoin and the DeFi services deployed on Tezos.
By Alexander Salazar
