Just as the market was coming to terms with the Terra crash, it was hit with the downfall of Ethereum’s layer-2 solution, Optimism. A minor mix-up of addresses caused the loss of 20 million OP tokens. While the network sent out appeals to the hacker to return the funds, he decided to send 1 million stolen tokens to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. Now, yet again, the hacker followed the same pattern but a message was included.
Yesterday, the community was rather confused about why a hacker would send stolen funds to Buterin out of all people. While the Ethereum co-founder remained mum about this, the hacker decided to send some more of the embezzled OP token to him. This transaction, however, entailed a message for the Ethereum co-founder.
The message read,
“Hello, Vitalik, I believe in you, just want to know your opinion on this. BTW, help to verify the return address and I will return the remaining after you. And hello Wintermute, sorry, I only have 18M and this is what I can return. Stay Optimistic!”
As seen in the above message sent to the Ethereum co-founder, the hacker suggested that 18 million OP tokens would be returned to the network.
Crypto Twitter was certainly amused by this hacker. While some believed that he was a white cap, a few others speculated that it was Buterin himself. However, an array of individuals question the point of the entire hack if the tokens were going to be returned.
OP Token plummets by 80 percent in 10 days
Optimism encountered issues in its airdrop as well. Following the turbulent airdrop, OP tokens were increasingly dumped causing damage to the price of the coin. This was further accompanied by the recent hack that further pushed OP to a low of $0.7142.
During press time, the asset seemed to be veering towards recovery with its 7.7 percent daily surge. OP token was trading for $0.933 while this comeback was lauded, the asset was still 80 percent below its all-time high of $4.57.