Matter Labs, the team behind the zkSync layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has confirmed that $1.7 million worth of 921 Ether (ETH) is currently stuck in one of its new smart contracts, GemstoneIDO.
However, the company claims that the funds are “safe” and that it has found an “elegant” solution to save the money that was accumulated during the Gemholic token sale.
starting Mentionsed Matter Labs said in its latest tweet that it has found a “great solution” to “unfreeze” the GemstoneIDO contract and transfer funds offshore, that the funds will not be “hanging around forever”.
@employeewho encountered a problem with his smart contract on zkSync Era, contact us for the support we provided.
We’d like to give the community an update and more context on their issue with full transparency, as we always have and always will.
– zkSync (zksync) April 7, 2023
Matter Labs has identified an issue that stemmed from the .transfer() function in the GemstoneIDO smart contract, which is part of a project run by the GemholicECO ecosystem.
Matter Labs said the issue could have been prevented had they deployed the nodes to a test network first.
“Unfortunately, the contracts were deployed to the Era mainnet without trying them on the test network or on the local node, which would have detected the problem immediately.”
The erroneous function came from zkSync Era, a new type of knowledge-less virtual machine (EVM) Ethereum virtual pool that executes smart contracts much faster than the underlying layer.
However, the team stressed that zkSync Era is not equivalent to EVM, which means that it is compatible with EVM at the bytecode level. This means that some functions work differently in the new environment.
“This is a deliberate design choice with specific advantages and trade-offs,” they said.
In justifying its design choice, Matter Labs said that zkSync Era can process some types of transactions between 10 and 1,000 times cheaper than other EVM suites.
However, Matter Labs itself has held responsibility for the error and assured members of the zkSync ecosystem that they will continue relentlessly resolving similar issues.
“With this comes great responsibility and inevitably the occasional friction and today was one of those cases. When there are problems, our team will remain alert and be relentless in problem-solving.”
zkEVMs are complex systems in the process of maturing. Although zkSync Era is still in Alpha system, we already have a thriving ecosystem.
– zkSync (zksync) April 7, 2023
However, several members of the CryptoCurrency subreddit expressed their frustration with this:
“Another example of why a chain isn’t rushing to launch its mainnet. Always remember these guys, EVM compatible = / = EVM equivalent.”
“I subscribe to seeing Zero Knowledge technology become more important in the crypto space. However, these chains need to take into account the fact that people’s money is at risk.”
Related: zkSync Era launches with Uniswap and Sushi – First zkEVM on mainnet
Transaction failures on GemstoneIDO nodes can be seen on the zkSync explorer page, which also shows 921 Ether being stored in its smart contract.
Matter Labs launched zkSync Era on the mainnet last week, promising that decentralized exchanges Uniswap and SushiSwap will be live within days. This has not happened yet, however, projects including Argent, Celer Network, and MetaMask are on the network now.
Updated 1:37 AM UTC April 7: This article has been updated to add comments from Matter Labs’ latest post about the incident.
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