A scheduled maintenance at 10 a.m. UTC on July 3 temporarily halted trading on Backpack, reopening two hours later. However, the restart led to account errors, prompting CEO Armani Ferrante to assure users of reviews and compensation.
Prior to the maintenance, Backpack had informed users on X about the offline period at 10 a.m., post-only mode starting at noon, and full trading resuming at 12:10 p.m. During the post-only window, customers could only place or cancel maker orders, with taker activity blocked.
Upon the return of spot and perpetual markets, some users reported unusual balance changes and order reversals.
One trader, Defi Remora, disclosed that a $104,000 withdrawal request made the night before was reversed to 891 Solana (SOL) in his account after the maintenance. Additionally, his margin debit increased from 31,000 USDT to 111,000 USDT, resulting in manual position unwinding at an estimated cost of $300 to $400.
Another user, Hebi from China, shared on X that long positions had switched to short positions and some holdings disappeared without a trace on the ledger during the downtime.
Ferrante Admits Coding Error and Vows Restitution
Addressing the incident on the project’s Discord channel, Ferrante labeled it as a “programming error” and deemed it unacceptable. He assured users that the engineering team would conduct a thorough review to prevent such occurrences in the future.
Ferrante encouraged affected users to reach out via email and promised personal handling of their claims, stating, “If you had any issues that were our fault, we will compensate.”
He clarified that the incident did not impact custody infrastructure, emphasizing the safety of funds. Furthermore, he highlighted Backpack’s security measures, including a two-tier multi-party computation wallet, cold storage custody, and continuous asset balance reconciliation.
Although no timeline was provided for a post-mortem, Ferrante pledged to share findings post internal audit completion. The company’s policy of reimbursing users for losses due to exchange malfunctions, such as inadvertent liquidations or mis-priced fills, was reaffirmed.
To compensate users eligible for a potential airdrop of a Backpack native token, the company’s Chinese profile on X announced double points for users with active trading positions on July 3.
