It seems that the company had accidentally deposited cryptocurrency into the accounts of some users totalling $89 million. This was apparently due to a bug in the system that resulted in the wrong payouts to users. Obviously $89 million is a lot of money, which is why the company is now pleading with users for its money back.
If you received a large, incorrect amount of COMP from the Compound protocol error:
Please return it to the Compound Timelock (0x6d903f6003cca6255D85CcA4D3B5E5146dC33925). Keep 10% as a white-hat.
Otherwise, it's being reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed.
— Robert Leshner (@rleshner) October 1, 2021
In a tweet by the company’s CEO Robert Leshner, he’s asking that users return the money. He suggests that those who do might even get to keep 10% of the money they were given as a reward for doing the right thing. However, he also threatened users who didn’t, saying that the money they received will be reported to the IRS as income (meaning that they’ll have to pay a tax on it), and that “most of you are doxxed”.
I'm trying to do anything I can to help the community get some of its COMP back, and this was a bone-headed tweet / approach. That's on me.
Luckily, the community is much bigger, and smarter, than just me.
I appreciate your ridicule and support.
— Robert Leshner (@rleshner) October 1, 2021
However, it seems that he backtracked on his comments, calling it a “bone-headed tweet/approach”. We’re not sure how many users have returned the money, but Leshner is taking time to tweet out to those who did.
https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1443984138848116739