Crypto Sent to WRONG ADDRESS: Is Your Money GONE FOREVER?
Is There any Secret Trick to Recover LOST Crypto Sent to WRONG ADDRESS?
We’re often warned to be careful when sending crypto, which begs the question: what happens if you send crypto to an address that doesn’t belong to your network or to a wrong one?
If you have forwarded your cryptocurrency to the wrong address, there are several possible scenarios that may occur.
The first one is that the wallet you sent your funds to is recently used.
On this case, the recipient will be in possession of the funds and the only way to recover them is to seek out and reach the recipient who is willing to go back the funds.
The second possible situation is that the destination address is a burn address or an empty wallet.
The purpose of this operation is to keep the coin receipt address totally secret, which is the only way to keep burn addresses from initiating any transactions.
In other words, the money you put in is never returned.
However, non-active wallets, or wallets that have not been used for more than three years, are the other way around.
The problem is that the owners who might have lost access or died without leaving their wallet information behind are the ones rendered inaccessible.
The scenario where the address you sent your assets to is not there, or rather it has just been created is the next possible outcome.
If the address you entered is in line with the blockchain’s address model, the transfer will be executed, disregarding the fact whether the recipient address is created or not.
Conceptually, those who generate a wallet and get the address can use the wallet to access the funds sent to the wallet.
Nevertheless, the probability of that happening is exceedingly low.
Now, let’s consider the other scenario: what if you send cryptocurrency to an incorrect public ledger?
Well, it depends.
The transfer would only be processed if the wallet address alignment of the sending and recipient blockchains is the same.
It keeps the token from being transferred to the other networks that are not related to it.
To illustrate, it is impossible to transfer assets directly from Bitcoin to Ethereum or the other way round as they are not designed to work in the same way.
On the other side, the tale may not be the same for networks connected by very close structural similarities.
Take Ethereum Network with other EVM layer 1 and layer 2 networks such as Avalanche and Polygon, for instance.
If you meant to send tokens to a friend on the Ethereum network but you mistakenly sent them to Polygon, the interoperability of these networks would allow you to easily transfer them back.
In this case, your friend’s tokens haven’t disappeared.
- They are just transferred to the Polygon Network.
- Your friend can then access the tokens you sent.
This is possible as your Ethereum address is somehow magically present on all EVM-compatible networks, that is by using the same private key you can access the same address on all those networks.
Thus, what would happen to your assets if you sent them unintentionally to a network that is similar to the EVN but with a different structure of addresses?
If the transaction fails, in all probability, you are never getting your tokens back.
In the scenario above, the two chains are employing different technologies which makes it impossible for the same mnemonic phrase to generates the same addresses on both networks.
Have you ever been guilty of any of those blunders?
If you have anything to add from your experience, go ahead and post it in the comments section below.
