Recovering Ethereum (ETH) sent to the wrong address or network is possible and quite simple most of the time.
But you should know which steps to follow, who to contact and what tools to use depending on your unique situation.
In this guide, we will show you how to recover ETH sent to the wrong address and network.
Also, if you lost your Ethereum (ETH) to a scammer or a scam platform / application, you can learn if it is possible to recover your coins.
How to recover Ethereum (ETH) sent to the wrong address
If you sent your Ethereum (ETH) to a wrong address, there are various possibilities and so different solutions.
The wrong address could be a contract address, an exchange address, an address that you copied from somewhere or a totally random address with wrong letters / numbers.
The first thing you should do is search the wrong addres on block explorer sites such as Etherscan, BscScan, PolygonScan, etc. and social media sites like Twitter.
By making a search about the wrong address, you can quickly understand if it is a contract address or an address that belongs to a crypto exchange.
If the wrong address is a contract address, you can see its page like the one below after searching the address on block explorer sites:
If you sent Ethereum to a contract address, the possibility of recovering ETH is quite low.
But you should still contact the developer of the token contract to ask if it is possible for them to return the token sent to the contract address.
In some cases, the contract developer may be able to help users whose tokens ended up in the contract address.
If the contract address belongs to a stablecoin, you can contact the company that issues the stablecoin. For other tokens, you can contact the developer / team of the token.
If the wrong address belongs to an exchange, you can see it labelled like this on block explorer sites such as Etherscan:
In that case, you should contact the exchange and explain the situation to the customer support.
The exchange could return your coin or credit it your exchange account if possible.
Another possibility with the wrong address is that it might be an address that you copied from somewhere by mistake.
So you can check whether the address belongs to a wallet or an exchange that you already use.
If the wrong address includes one or more wrong letters or numbers and apparently owned by no one, then your ETH can’t be recovered.
You can search the address on block explorer sites such as Etherscan and social media sites to see if the address is owned by someone or there are transactions associated with it.
How to recover Ethereum (ETH) sent to the wrong network
Recovering Ethereum sent to the wrong network is quite simple especially when it is your own wallet.
If the receiving address belongs to an exchange, there is nothing you can do other than contacting the customer support of the exchange.
As you don’t have control over the address (private key), your ETH can’t be recovered by you.
Whether it will be returned to you or credited to your exchange account depends on the recovery policies of the exchange that you use.
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When it comes to your own crypto wallet, the recovery of ETH sent to the wrong network is much easier.
If you sent Ethereum to a wallet that you use such as MetaMask but selected a wrong network, you should first add that network to your wallet.
For example, if you selected BSC by mistake when making a transaction, you can add BSC to MetaMask by following our tutorial.
To learn how to add other networks such as Polygon and Arbitrum to your wallet, you can do a search on Google like this: ”How to add ”x” network to MetaMask”.
After adding the network to your wallet, you should also import the token with its contract address if it does not show up in your wallet.
You can find the contract address of the token that is sent to the wrong network by searching your address on the relevant block explorer site and clicking the token under your token holdings.
For example, if the wrong network is BSC, you can search your address on BscScan, or if the network is Arbitrum, you can use the block explorer ”Arbiscan”.
After searching your address, you should click the token under your token holdings that you have transferred by selecting a wrong network as shown below:
You can then find and copy the contract address of the token on the wrong network as shown below:
If you use a crypto wallet like Trust Wallet, you can try directly adding the token with its contract address on the wrong network.
This way your token can directly show up in your wallet. To transfer it back to the exchange that you use or a different address, you also need the native coin of the wrong network in your wallet.
If the token is on BSC by mistake, you need some BNB in your wallet to transfer the token to other addresses.
Similarly, to transfer a token on the Polygon network, for example, you need its native coin, which is MATIC.
How to recover Ethereum (ETH) sent to a scammer
If you sent your Ethereum to a scammer, you can’t get it back directly as you don’t have control over the scammer’s address.
Also, you can’t get help from developers of the blockchain or anyone that claims to be ”support” since blockchains are not centralized.
But there are a few things that you can do to recover your Ethereum sent to a scammer address.
You can search the scammer’s address on block explorer sites such as Etherscan, BscScan and PolygonScan depending on the network on which ETH is transferred.
By tracking transactions, you can see where your ETH is headed to which could be an exchange address or another address that is still controlled by the scammer.
If the scammer sent your ETH to an exchange address or any other address that is owned by a platform, you can contact them and explain the situation.
But, most of the time, this is not enough to get your ETH back.
As exchanges or other platforms can’t exactly know if you actually lost your ETH or the receiving address is actually owned by a scammer, you need to contact the police or relevant local government agency.
By contacting relevant authorities in your country and providing them with all the evidence and documents you have, you can make the possible action and recovery of the coin by the exchange is more likely.
Besides your ETH, if you lost your recovery seed phrase or private keys to the scammer, you should also stop using your wallet.
Any new coins and tokens in your address including those staked and in different networks can be transferred by the scammer to different addresses as well.
If possible, you can make an attempt to transfer any cryptocurrencies left in your wallet to a new wallet.
After that, you can forget about it and only use your new crypto wallet.
But, in any case, it would be wise to still keep the exposed recovery phrase with you as you may need it to prove that you own the address.
If you have any questions about recovering ETH sent to the wrong address or network, you can leave a comment below.
