PANews reported on June 1st that, according to The Block, a developer using the pseudonym Florent helped rescue approximately 1003 ETH (worth about $2 million) that had been trapped in the HongCoin ICO contract for nine years since 2016. The ICO should have automatically refunded funds due to failing to meet its funding goals, but a coding error caused the funds to be locked. Because the contract used an older version of the Solidity language, it lacked overflow protection mechanisms. Florent discovered that by calling the team's administrator function and entering a specific value, the holder's balance could be reset to 1, thus releasing the ETH through the refund check.

The administrator function was restricted by HongCoin's multisignature address. After Florent contacted the team and verified the process on the testnet, the team signed the unlocking transactions themselves. The entire process took about a week, during which the team signed 41 transactions, covering approximately 1000 ETH. Currently, two investors have received 96.5 ETH and voluntarily paid Florent white-hat rewards. Florent stated that his motivation was curiosity and understanding how the old contract worked.