- Matter Labs confirms that 921 ETH is stuck on one of its smart contracts.
- Its zkSync Era is not EVM equivalent but a deliberate design choice.
- The fault came from launching the Era mainnet before testing it on the testnet or a local node.
Shortly after the release of the “Crypto Losses in Q1 2023” report by Immunefi, Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync—an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution—has admitted that 921 ETH is presently stuck on one of its smart contracts—GemstoneIDO.
With the crypto assets worth $1.7 million stuck on GemstoneIDO, zkSync has further stated that the assets are safe and the firm can retrieve the funds through an “elegant solution.”
Eden Au, a research director at The Block, tweeted on his page that the digital assets held on the GemstoneIDO were raised during the Gemholic token sale. This triggered a response from zkSync, who stated that the funds were “not stuck forever.”
How Did This Happen?
In a Twitter thread, Matter Labs explained how the 921 ETH came to be stuck on the smart contract.
“@GemholicECO, who ran into a problem with their smart contract on zkSync Era, has contacted us for support, which we gladly provided,” the firm said.
Matter Labs admitted that the digital assets are secure, and an elegant solution for unfreezing the holdings from the contract has been discovered. The firm found that the problem began when GemholicECO—a multi-product platform—launched its token contract and performed a pre-sale launch on zkSync Era.
According to Matter Labs, shortly after the launch of the token contract, GemholicECO ran into a problem with the contract—GemstoneIDO—due to the usage of the .transfer() function.
The firm admitted that the contracts were unfortunately launched on Era mainnet without being tested on the testnet or a local node. If the launch had been tried on any of these two, the problem would have been immediately identified.
The fault of the function was believed to have been from zkSync Era, the latest variant of EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) Zero Knowledge proof rollup that carries out smart contracts quicker than on the base layer. The firm did, however, mention that zkSync is not EVM equivalent, which means it is compatible with the EVM at a bytecode level.
“zkSync is not EVM equivalent, but a deliberate design choice. Era has a diverging, unique gas metering, which enables some transaction types to be 10 to 1000 times cheaper than any other EVM rollup,” zkSync explained, justifying the reason behind its design choice.
On the other hand, Matter Labs took responsibility for the fault. They assured the members of its zkSync community that it would respond swiftly and efficiently to any similar problems in the future.
Conclusion
Matter Labs has taken responsibility for the failure of the GemholicIDO contract, which has $1.7 million worth of digital assets stuck on its contract. The funds are retrievable, and zkSync has stated that this issue is being handled.
