This meant three things:1. There was a ticking clock. Even if nobody else noticed the free money, anyone could remove their own liquidity at any time, accidentally receiving the tokens from the contract.2. I could put on my white hat and try to recover the tokens for the person who had accidentally sent them in. It would be as simple as calling the... See more

On Wednesday afternoon, someone asked whether it was possible to recover Uniswap liquidity tokens that had been accidentally sent to the pair contract itself.

I found the contract. The liquidity tokens were still there—and were worth around $12,000.

My initial thought was that the tokens would be locked forever. But late that night, I had the sudden realization that if the tokens were still there, they could be recovered — by anyone.