Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) says that customers may at some point mistakenly send unsupported tokens to their Coinbase address on an unsupported chain.
One example of this is BNB Smart Chain (formerly known as Binance Smart Chain) – which is currently “not supported by Coinbase and as such, these transactions result in a loss of funds.”
Historically, these assets have “been unrecoverable, in part because our employees and support channels don’t have access to the private keys needed to reverse these transactions.”
Although these transactions make up “a small fraction of total transfers, these errors understandably have created frustrations, where assets are locked away with no timeline for recovery.”
To help make onchain recovery easier, Coinbase have “upgraded their ERC-20 self-service asset recovery tool to support recovering assets on not just Ethereum, but BNB Smart Chain and Polygon as well.”
Coinbase intend to continue “to make ongoing upgrades to our asset recovery tool in an effort to make crypto safer and easier to use.”
Their solution reportedly provides “a simple, safe, and secure way for customers to recover almost 3,000 unsupported ERC-20 tokens that were mistakenly sent to Coinbase addresses via BNB Smart Chain and 800 sent via Polygon.”
Over the next few weeks, they’re rolling out this feature and “all eligible customers will have the ability to recover funds on BNB Smart Chain and Polygon.”
To recover funds, customers only need two things:
- 1) The TXID for the transaction where the asset was lost
- 2) The inbound Coinbase address where the asset was lost
With just a few clicks, you can “recover mistakenly sent eligible assets and send them to your Coinbase Wallet, or any compatible self-custodial wallet.”
Their recovery tool is able to “move unsupported assets directly from your inbound Coinbase address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point.”
Coinbase currently support the recovery of select ERC-20 tokens “on the Ethereum base layer, Polygon, and BNB Smart Chain.”
As clarified in the update, “not all tokens are eligible for recovery, and the eligibility of any given token is subject to change.”
Coinbase added that they are “continuously investigating and expanding the scope of this feature to support additional assets and networks.”
Due to the technical complexities surrounding the recovery of unsupported assets, they “can’t guarantee that any particular asset will be eligible in the future.”
Coinbase also mentioned that it is important to note “that the assets eligible for recovery have not gone through Coinbase’s rigorous asset listing review process.”
Customers will need to “do their own due diligence to determine the authenticity, safety, and security of both the assets they choose to recover and BNB Smart Chain itself.”
Unlike other asset recovery solutions that may “charge up to 15% for asset recovery and require a customer service agent to send you the funds manually, we do not charge a recovery fee for recoveries estimated to be worth under $100.”
For recoveries estimated to be worth over $100, they charge “a small recovery fee (5%) to cover development and maintenance costs for the service. A separate network fee applies to all recoveries. For more information, see our pricing and fees disclosures.”
The firm says its mission at Coinbase is to “increase economic freedom in the world, and they are continuing to invest in tools like this as the most trusted platform for buying, selling, and exchanging digital assets.”
They’re committed to reducing points of friction and “focusing on improving usability to better serve and earn the trust of our customers.”