DOGE Network Withdrawals Temporarily Suspened
Binance announced the news of the withdrawal suspension on Thursday (Nov. 11, 2022). According to the exchange, the action was taken after discovering “a minor issue with the DOGE network withdrawals” on the platform.
While the exchange did not mention the exact issue, Binance stated that the withdrawal will remain frozen until the problem is rectified. In the meantime, users can withdraw their DOGE using other networks.
An excerpt from the announcement reads:
“As a result, we have temporarily suspended DOGE network withdrawals until this issue is resolved. Binance is actively working with the DOGE project team to resolve the issue.”
A few days before the Binance incident, Dogecoin Core was updated from v1.14.3 to v1.14.5. The update was aimed at improving the general performance of the network, with some important changes being to resolve some security vulnerabilities and reduce transaction fees.
However, with the update came issues for Binance users who claim that the exchange asked them to return DOGE tokens that they did not have. According to a tweet by Chinese journalist Colin Wu, failed withdrawal requests from previous years went through after the update, resulting in some users receiving old meme tokens.
A screenshot shared in Wu’s comment section was supposedly an interaction between a user and a Binance customer service (CS) personnel. The user stated that the platform initiated the withdrawal without authorization. However, the CS said that the user would need to repay the DOGE before the withdrawal is enabled on their account.
Dogecoin Developers say Stuck Withdrawals Likely Resumed Due to Lower Transaction Fees
Meanwhile, the official Twitter account of Dogecoin Developers explained the situation in a tweet thread. Before the upgrade, the DOGE tokens could not be withdrawn because of insufficient transaction fees. However, these withdrawal requests may have possibly resumed after the update which came with lower fees.
Part of the tweet thread said:
“Currently what we believe has happened is the previously stuck transactions have been retried automatically, as would happen on each node restart after upgrade – and went through since now the minfee is lower.”
The developers further said that Binance previously informed them about stuck transactions over one year ago. While the exchange did not show the developers the transactions, they gave instructions on how to fix the issue. But, according to the team, “we were not notified as to whether or not they followed these instructions.”
At the moment, there is no timeline for when the issue would be resolved, and it is yet to be known if Binance users will still have to repay the meme tokens.
Earlier in November, the crypto exchange giant temporarily disabled all cryptocurrency withdrawals to clear a large backlog. The company has also restricted certain offerings in different countries including Australia, Hong Kong, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.
