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Compound, a DeFi, staking protocol has mistakenly sent $90.1 to the users of the decentralized finance. The founder of Compound is now begging the users to voluntarily send back the crypto tokens.

 “If you received a large, incorrect amount of COMP from the Compound protocol error: Please return it,” Robert Leshner, founder of Compound Labs, tweeted late Thursday.

“Keep 10% as a white-hat. Otherwise, it’s being reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed,” continued the tweet.

The price of Compound’s token “comp” plummeted by about 13% in 24 hours period following the news. However, it has gained back momentum a few hours later. Now it is uncertain whether the users will decide to return the $90.1 million to the platform.

s “Alchemix [another DeFi protocol] had a similar incident a few months back where they gave out more rewards than intended,” blockchain security researcher Mudit Gupta told CNBC. “Almost everyone who got the extra rewards refunded the extra.”

However, for Alchemix exchange, the sum was only $4.8 million. Still, Gupta is hopeful that users will send the tokens back to the platform. 

 “This makes me optimistic that people will refund most of the COMP tokens, as well, but you can never be sure,” he said.

How It Happened

Decentralized Finances (DeFi) protocols are designed to recreate traditional financial systems such as exchanges and banks by relying on blockchains.

On Wednesday, Compound had set up a supposedly “normal” upgrade which turned out awfully for the company. 

 “The new Comptroller contract contains a bug, causing some users to receive far too much COMP,” explained Leshner in a tweet.

“There are no admin controls or community tools to disable the COMP distribution; any changes to the protocol require a 7-day governance process to make their way into production,” he added, indicating that no fix could take effect for a week.

Gupta, a core developer at decentralized crypto exchange SushiSwap, said in a tweet that the entire episode could be blamed on a “one-letter bug” in the code.