One of the most difficult, but important, errors to solve is a missing basis. These transactions inflate your gains, so it's important to fix them.
There are many potential causes of missing basis, but they all fall under one of a few categories: transactions are missing from your history, transactions have been labeled or edited incorrectly, or transactions have incorrect information. There are a few different ways to approach fixing missing basis, including:
Reimporting Your Wallet(s)
Reimporting your wallet has two benefits:
If your first import missed a transaction or 2, reimporting the wallet should find those missing transactions
It will also pull in any updates we have issued since you last imported the wallet, which may also help clear up missing basis, and lead to a more accurate calculation.
However, keep in mind that when you reimport, you may lose past edits, and otherwise could cause your tax calculations to go up or down, so there is some risk here.
Searching for Spam
Another common cause of missing basis is when past transactions were flagged as spam. Spam gets filtered out of our calculation, so if you sell those tokens at a later date, they will have a missing basis.
If you find a transaction like this one below and click "no, not spam," that will usually fix the specific transaction.
Cross-Reference Awaken with the Block Explorer
You can also cross-reference Awaken's transaction history with what you see on the explorer. To do that, click on the token in question, such as OPX (below), to pull up your history with that token in Awaken:
Then click the drop-down "..." menu next to GOLD and select "view transfers in Optimisticscan" like this:
On Solana transactions you click "view token account":
Cross-compare between the explorer and your Awaken account, and you may find a transaction that is incorrect or missing entirely. Add that information to Awaken, and the missing basis should clear up.
Double-Spend Errors
Occasionally, Awaken will double-import transactions, such as with SUIMON here:
This leads to deducting more of the token from your balance than should be, which leads to missing basis.
You can run a filtered search for duplicate transfers like this by clicking into the search function on our transactions page and selecting "duplicate transfer amounts" as a filter.
If you try these methods and you still can't resolve your missing basis, you can always send us a message and we do all we can to help.
If You Can't Resolve Missing Basis
If you are unable to resolve a missing basis error no matter what you do, the three remaining choices are:
Leave it as is: this is the "conservative" approach, meaning you will overpay on your taxes, but it's also the safest, as you won't have to defend your position if you get audited.
Estimate your missing purchase price and edit the transaction manually: you can edit your missing basis directly in the transaction by clicking the pencil icon next to it. Then select the "..." drop-down menu and click "set has cost basis."
Estimate your missing purchase amount and date, and create a manual transaction to represent it: If you are confident that you have a good idea of when you purchased a token and for how much, you can make a manual transaction to represent that purchase. This is the most complete way to fix a missing basis, and will ensure you realize long-term gains instead of short-term gains, if appropriate.
Please also see our video tutorial on resolving missing basis: