To date, due to the excellent electrochemical inertness, superb electrical conductivity and good mechanical stability in both aqueous and nonaqueous solutions, platinum (Pt) has been widely employed as counter electrode material in three-electrode setups to perform electroanalytical chemistry. However, recent reports have revealed that the use of Pt based counter electrodes for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), without using any ionexchange membrane to separate the working electrode from the counter electrode, would influence the experimental results substantially owing to the electrochemical dissolution-deposition process of Pt. A controversial issue has therefore arisen regarding whether or not Pt should be continued to be utilized as the counter electrode material for HER. In fact, before the upsurge of research in electrocatalysis, the dissolution of Pt has been widely investigated in the fuel cell research since the dissolution not only detaches Pt from the electrode surface but also deteriorates significantly the overall cell performance during electrochemical processes. As early in 1988, Ota and his colleagues [1] have systematically studied the weight loss of Pt anode in H2SO4 aqueous solution by spectrophotometric method. It was found that there is an accelerated Pt corrosion under cyclic voltammetry scan caused by the reduction of oxide layer, which could facilitate the corrosion of Pt. The electrochemically corroded Pt constituents are then considered to get redeposited back onto the cathode. For revealing this complete Pt dissolution mechanism, enormous research efforts have been made to evaluate the characteristics of these surface oxides (i.e. PtOx, x = 1 or 2), the valence of the dissolved constituents, the influence of potential change, temperature, pH, and the mass-transport on the reactions participated [2–4]. Evidently, Pt is not as stable as it is anticipated. Even though great achievements have been obtained in the scientific community, very few reports concentrate on the influence of potential Pt contamination on the HER performance when using Pt based counter electrodes during the experiment. In 2015, to the best of our knowledge, we were the first group to propose taking