Optimism (OP), a second-layer solution for the Ethereum blockchain (ETH), will finally get its hands on 18 of the 20 million tokens it was stolen last week. Indeed, the hacker decided to send one million back to Vitalik Buterin first, before sending 17 million back later.
Optimism recovers 17 million of its stolen tokens
After its unfortunate loss of 20 million OP tokens last week, which amounted to $15 million at the time, Optimism can rest assured: the attacker has finally decided to send back 17 million tokens.
Hey folks-in the interest of transparency (,), the address has returned a majority of the OP, and @wintermute_t has committed to reimbursing the Optimism Foundation for the remaining 2mm OP, which was kept as a bounty. https://t.co/jtElgPdNPk
– Optimism (✨_✨) (@optimismPBC) June 10, 2022
The return of these precious tokens has not been without its ups and downs, however. On Thursday 9 June, the hacker sent 1 million OP tokens directly to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet, along with an on-chain message:
“Hello, Vitalik, I believe in you, I just want to know your opinion on this matter. Also, please help me to check the return address and I will return the rest after you. And hello Wintermute, sorry, I only have 18 million and that’s all I can return. Stay optimistic!”
In other words, for reasons that are still unclear, the attacker asked Vitalik to send these 1 million tokens (about $840,000) back to Optimism’s wallet, which he of course did.
It is worth noting that the latter has to deal with this type of request in spite of himself, since in the past, the developers of Shiba Inu (SHIB) had sent him 8 billion tokens, 90% of which he had burnt.
The hacker therefore respected his commitment and returned the 17 million OP tokens that remained in his wallet via 17 different transactions. However, he decided to keep another 1 million, not including the 1 million tokens he had sold for Ether (ETH) earlier in the week.
A deal that could have ended badly
A deal that could have cost Optimism dearly: on Wednesday 8 June, the organisation sent 20 million OP tokens to Wintermute, a company that was then in charge of optimising the redistribution of governance tokens.
Unfortunately, due to an internal error, the tokens were sent to the wrong address. Indeed, Wintermute had sent an address for layer 1 that was incompatible with layer 2, which is Optimism. The 15 million OP tokens ended up on an unknown wallet, and were quickly recovered by the hacker we mentioned earlier.
Fortunately, all’s well that ends well. The hacker’s motives are still unclear, but Wintermute had informed him that if he did not return the stolen funds within a week, legal proceedings would be initiated and everything would be done to find him.
The OP token’s price was impacted by this news, which should be seen in the context of the market’s overall decline. The price of the token has fallen by 55% in one week, from $1.36 to $0.5 at present.
