Is there any way to investigate where ADA from transaction ended or confirm it was delievered?

Hello,

Few epochs ago we found an organization, non-profit Ocean Cleanup project that we decided to support as part of our pool mission. What we liked about them most was the fact that they were accepting crypto donations. They sent us the ADA address addr1q8ka0eu68v2c8fv4jvugarerkt6dygzwe24uw78xjpnpzlhd6lne5wc4swjetyec368j8vh56gsyaj4tcauwdyrxz9lq7x60mu for the donations, together with somewhat obscure information that they don’t want anyone to share this address publicly, despite they withdrawn this request later (that’s why I am opening this thread only now, weeks later).

We sent them 100ADA as donation, the transaction is here: Transaction | Cardano Explorer but they told us multiple times that they received nothing and that they can’t verify we really sent anything to them.

I was trying to investigate this myself, but I have to admit I find cardano UTXO distribution extremly confusing, as cardano-wallet is splitting transactions to more UTXOs and addresses and thus makes the money flow extremely obfuscated (I raised the issue about this here: Allow user to send without splitting the wallet balance into more addresses · Issue #2614 · input-output-hk/cardano-wallet · GitHub). Basically it seems that the address they sent us for donation now has 0 ADA balance. I don’t know why, maybe someone hacked their wallet and stole everything? Maybe they just don’t know how to use cardano? Maybe something else happened wrong on our end?

Is there anyone proficient with the blockchain enough to figure out what happened to that 100ADA? Or confirm that we indeed delivered it to that address they gave us?

Thank you

This is the transaction where u can see that they received your donation


Looks good to me, although i cannot find this transaction by going into the recipients wallet and scrolling through the transactions. If you are talking with them, let them know that they need to stake that wallet :wink:

ok here is excerpt from mail communication so that you can understand better why I am so confused about this:

first e-mail from them:

On 2021-06-15 13:03, Info | The Ocean Cleanup wrote:

Hi Jan,

Thanks for reaching out and wanting to support The Ocean Cleanup with
donations made with Cardano - we really appreciate it!

Below you can find our ADA wallet address:

Cardano (ADA):

addr1q8ka0eu68v2c8fv4jvugarerkt6dygzwe24uw78xjpnpzlhd6lne5wc4swjetyec368j8vh56gsyaj4tcauwdyrxz9lq7x60mu

All cryptocurrency donations are made to Stichting The Ocean Cleanup,
a registered charity in The Netherlands. Please note, we are unable to
provide a tax receipt to an individual with a dollar/euro amount, only
a proof of donation with the wallet id, transaction id, and amount of
the specific crypto donation.

If you wish to donate a significant or recurring amount, or via
another cryptocurrency, please let us know.

Independent supporters have chosen not to commit to The Ocean Cleanup
upfront. We kindly ask independent supporters to state they are
independent of -and not endorsed or sponsored by- us and to not
mention The Ocean Cleanup on packaging, in advertising, or on
promotional material. A low-key mention, for example, on your site, in
a blog or newsletter is okay - as long as it’s not used as part of the
sales strategy. For example, if you will be donating a portion of the
proceeds, only mention The Ocean Cleanup once the campaign has
concluded. To ensure proper branding and fact-checking, we ask for all
proposed communication material be sent to our team for review. Our
logo is not available for external use.
We would like to kindly ask you to not share our wallet address
publicly. Many thanks for your understanding.

We have unfortunately started to see our name being abused by some
tokens, which has led to the above guidelines.

Our response:

From: ops@adaseal.eu
To: Info | The Ocean Cleanup info@theoceancleanup.com

Hello Patricia,

Today we sent you 100 ADA to that address you provided, transaction
detail is visible here:
Transaction | Cardano Explorer

I hope this donation will help you with your project, keep up the good
work!

Petr, adaseal team

To which we got this response later after asking for donation confirmation

On 2021-07-08 16:37, Info | The Ocean Cleanup wrote:
Hi Jan,

I have contacted our IT department to verify whether this donation has
arrived and was informed that it was not received by us. I can’t
provide you with proof of donation under these circumstances.

after some urges to verify again:

On 2021-07-20 11:41, Info | The Ocean Cleanup wrote:
Hi Petr,
I am sorry, but we were not able to find your donation in our database. Since our wallet address is already made public it is completely fine for you to be using the transaction ID as proof for your donation!
Once again, I’m sorry we were not able to recover proof of your donation but we thank you for you contribution to our mission!

Now I am fine with not having this confirmation, but it’s a bit frustrating that we sent them ADA and they can’t find it. We wanted to use this for promotion to show how Cardano is empowering positive global change, but if its users find it so hard to even use :slight_smile: then that’s a bit of fail for us.

Hopefuly their ADA was not stolen… In explorer I can see balance 0 on that address we sent to.

btw regarding the staking part - I find it quite problematic (but perhaps a feature from security point of view) that if a wallet is not staked, it doesn’t have a stake key shared between the wallet addresses that UTXOs are distributed to and therefore, unlike with staked wallet, it’s impossible to figure out precise balance of such a wallet, unless you have the private key (you are the owner).

for example - with normal staked wallet, every single wallet address with positive ballance shares the same stake key and various explorers can calculate the wallet balance as a sum of all wallet addresses that share this stake key. But if it’s not staked, like in the case of this organization it seems impossible.

At some point you could say that not staking improves your privacy, as nobody can map all your wallet addresses to single wallet and figure your exact balance.

U should provide them the transaction ID

but that’s what we did, you can see in e-mail communication I sent them the link to explorer, which contains the transaction ID