Optimism Hacker Promises to Return 18M OP Tokens, Sends Another 1M to Buterin

Buterin has received another batch of one million OP tokens, including a message that the attacker believes in Ethereum’s co-founder. Moreover, the person who swiped the 20 million coins promised to return the remaining to Wintermute and Optimism.

• CryptoPotato reported yesterday the drama that unfolded recently between Optimism and Wintermute – a liquidity provider partner.
• The Ethereum Layer-2 solution was supposed to send 20 million OP tokens to Wintermute’s addresses, but the latter provided the wrong one. Instead of the Optimism Layer-2 wallet, Wintermute gave an Ethereum Layer-1 address.
• This meant that the assets were effectively inaccessible due to an incompatibility due to multi-sig tech.
• While Wintermute was contemplating switching to Layer-2 to receive the funds, an unknown perpetrator beat the company to the punch and swiped all 20 million tokens.
• The firm took responsibility for its mistake and urged the attacker to return the funds before revealing their identity and pursuing them in court.
• It seems this had an effect as the hacker sent one million tokens, somewhat surprisingly, to a wallet belonging to Vitalik Buterin.
• Today, they made another such transaction, but this one carried a special message for Ethereum’s co-founder. It reads that the attacker believes in Buterin and asked for his opinion on what to do with the funds.
• As far as Wintermute and Optimism go, the hacker said they were “sorry” and added that they only had “18M, and this is what I can return.”