Coinbase launches asset recovery tool for unsupported Ethereum-based tokens

According to the company, it has launched a new tool to help its customers recover more than 4,000 ERC-20 token sent to it's ledger.

The term "ERC-20 token" is used for any criptotypic creation using the ether block cipher. There are thousands that it doesn't support Customers can use the self-service asset recovery tool to recover different types of token.

Will Robinson, vice president of engineering at Coinbase, said that it has been a pain point for customers who send ERC-20 token to a receive address. People were stuck up until this point after accidentally sending assets.

If you sent assets that were not supported by Coinbase to a users address on the exchange, you would get a message saying the assets were delivered on-chain, but they didn't actually go to the receiver's wallet. Internal operators don't have access to the private keys needed to reverse transactions so these assets are unrecoverable

Such transactions make up a small fraction of the total transfers, but from an individual user's point of view it could make for a very bad day. According to its website, the platform has over 100 million verified users in over 100 countries.

Robinson said that many ERC-20 token can be recovered if they have pricing information on a Decentralized Exchange. We don't make any quality representation of these assets, as they haven't gone through our review process, but we're facilitating the returns that accidentally sent it.

Customers need to give their transaction identification for the lost assets and the contract address of the lost asset in order to recover funds. The recovery tool doesn't work for everyone. There isn't anything to be done for supported assets. The problem doesn't exist in the same way because the users of the company have access to it.

The feature is not available for users in Japan. There is no recovery fee for amounts less than $100, but those worth more than $100 will be charged a fee.

Robinson said that there are no firm commitments for support for other asset recovery beyond the ERC-20 token. This is a direction we know is important to users.