As many of you are already aware, $NUM was listed on Gate.io, KuCoin, PancakeSwap, and Uniswap on Thursday, November 18. We’d first like to thank you for the great interest in our platform’s native token, $NUM. The 24h volume was over US$50 million.
Today, we’d like to address an incident at the opening where some $NUM were prematurely available in the market, creating a low-liquidity pool on PancakeSwap.
Before going into more details, Numbers Protocol would send our appreciation to our partner, KuCoin, for the fast response and thorough investigation of this incident.
After a detailed investigation, we now know that it was due to a temporary system issue in KuCoin. According to the agreement, the withdrawal should not have opened until the next day (November 19). However, due to a KuCoin system upgrade on November 18, some users were allowed to withdraw $NUM unexpectedly. One user withdrew around 37.308 $NUM and created liquidity on PancakeSwap before we could.
When the PancakeSwap pool opened with extremely low liquidity, the Numbers Protocol team was immediately aware of this issue. We tried our best to add liquidity into the pool as quickly as possible, while simultaneously investigating the root cause.
In layman’s terms — A user unexpectedly received $NUM ahead of schedule, resulting in the user opening a pool with extremely low liquidity.
To understand how this happened, we traced back the transactions and found that the incident occurred through four transactions. We are sharing the transactions publicly so that everyone can verify what happened for themselves.
The four transactions are:
- Numbers sent 250 $NUM to the KuCoin contact window for CEX initialization.
https://bscscan.com/tx/0x4adb4c2d5b346df98978eafeb9349a9a984f1997f1055c59ccb90f2770f2b28a - The KuCoin contact window’s wallet sent 250 $NUM to KuCoin system wallet.
https://bscscan.com/tx/0x812bf39fd0205bfcf6abc7fee58cef6d00f7c62d4fa04f82f430400984f946c9 - A user withdraw from KuCoin system wallet and sent 37.308 $NUM to another wallet
https://bscscan.com/tx/0x83a01e03595abea31bd8396b7ccf7c36b4375b4c1ac56a2a5c20cd94c139a26c. - The owner of this wallet used the 37.308 $NUM to open a PancakeSwap pool with extremely low liquidity.
https://bscscan.com/tx/0x71e063adcfd0365f37fb9fa3f8a06e2ba52f8484f2842bfbc918cf461c0a990b
This withdrawal (step 3) should not be allowed until 10:00 Nov 19 (UTC), and this unexpected withdrawal was the root cause of the incident.
A few minutes after listing, we became aware of the unexpected liquidity pool. We traced the transactions and found that the $NUM tokens came from a KuCoin wallet. We were shocked by the discovery because it simply should not have happened. After consulting with blockchain experts, we shared the results with KuCoin.
KuCoin was also shocked, but they immediately took responsibility and initiated an internal investigation. Several hours later, we were informed that they had figured out the incident was due to a temporary system issue, which led to the unexpected withdrawal. KuCoin was very responsive after we contacted them.
While we wanted to inform our community as soon as possible, it was important for us to first understand exactly what happened, as well as work with KuCoin to resolve it. We respected KuCoin’s decision to open an investigation and the time needed for internal discussions.
Again, we cannot thank our community enough for their support and understanding. The last few days were challenging, both for our team and our users, but we thank everyone for their patience as we work to resolve this unexpected issue.
We would also like to thank all the moderators of the local channels, and the moderators of the main channels for their support over the last few days.
For anyone affected by the incident, KuCoin will be providing a compensation plan after the investigation. Also, KuCoin is committed to launching a campaign with $NUM airdrop to reward users who have traded $NUM on KuCoin since trading opens.
Going forward, Numbers will be sharing an announcement for our very first $NUM airdrop, so please subscribe to our announcement channel and stay tuned.
Numbers is only as strong as our community, and though this was an unexpected issue, we saw firsthand how a common belief in something can bring everyone together. We appreciate everyone in our community, our team, and of course, everyone over at KuCoin who helped us resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Update from KuCoin (Nov. 24)
Original announcement: https://t.me/Kucoin_Exchange/5235084
KuCoin Community Investigation Form for NUM Traders
On November 18, 2021, a user unexpectedly withdrew $NUM ahead of schedule and opened a DEX pool with extremely low liquidity. KuCoin is collecting information from anyone affected by the incident as part of its ongoing investigation.
For more details, please check the official announcement released by Numbers Protocol (https://medium.com/numbers-protocol/investigation-report-for-low-liquidity-in-pancakeswap-at-listing-c163a74b90e7).
Please fill out this investigation form (https://forms.gle/RFzTEXUtqdMqTNEo8) until 10:00 on November 26, 2021 (UTC) with valid information, and we will review the situation based on the information provided. We will reply within 5 working days after receiving your information. If anything is found to be invalid or false, your request will not be accepted by KuCoin.
Note: KuCoin will only respond to users who have suffered losses from 13:07:44 to 13:10:00 on November 18, 2021 (UTC).
