Optimism hacker who got away with 20 million tokens sends 1 million tokens to Ethereum Founder Vitaik Buterin. Optimism, the platform behind Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solution, witnessed an exploit recently.
A hacker got away with 20 million OP tokens after token launch partner Wintermute transferred the tokens to the wrong account. The hacker seems to have made another move now.
The hack initially took place on June 1st, when the hacker gained over $35 million worth of OP tokens. The hacker then sold one million tokens for ETH and kept the other 19 million. The hacker who went into stealth mode is back on the surface.
Optimism hacker sends one million OP to Vitalik
The hacker’s next move mystified spectators even more: delivering another million OP tokens to Vitalik Buterin’s public wallet. Today, at 12:36 a.m. UTC, the transfer took place. The hacker’s wallet still contains the remaining 18 million OP tokens.
The hackers’ intention and motive for sending the tokens to Vitalik are still unclear. It might be just for publicity or to raise awareness.
OP is the native token of Optimism’s new collective DAO. Decentralized autonomous organizations usually use governance tokens to pool collective ideas and allow the members to vote on certain decisions. The initial plan during the launch was to send the 20 million tokens to collective stakeholders. But then things took a U-turn when the tokens were sent to the wrong address.
Wintermute and Optimism team has been keeping an eagle’s eye on the hackers’ movement. Wintermute had the slightest hope that the hacker must be a white hat for the reason that he retained most of the OP tokens.
With his recent move, the hacker puzzled the Optimism team about his motives. The team must wait and watch for the hackers’ next move as the hacker doesn’t seem to give up.