After an administrative error, the hacker stole 20 million OP tokens. Optimism’s mysterious hacker has done it again.
Ethereum Layer-2 Scaling Solution Optimism Yesterday was revealed that a hacker stole 20 million Optimism OP tokens from token launch partner Wintermute. The hacker now plans to send one million stolen OP tokens via Vitalik Buterin’s wallet.
Optimism’s DAO is the native token for OP tokens, which are the native tokens for the Optimism Collective DaAO. These governance tokens are used by DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) to enable members to collectively vote on decisions. Optimism wanted to distribute 20 million OP tokens to Optimism Collective stakeholders to continue with the token’s launch . Optimism consulted market maker Wintermute to streamline the token process. However, the tokens were accidentally sent to an inaccessible account last week. A hacker then accessed the account and stole all 20 million tokens.
The hacker then sold one million OP tokens to ETH after stealing the haul. It was worth $35 million at the time. They then sat on 19 million tokens and went silent for one week.
Optimism and Wintermute speculated about the hacker’s motivations at that point. Wintermute hoped in a post yesterday that hacker may have been a “white hat,” benevolent operation because he retained large amounts of OP tokens. The hackers threatened to extort the hacker with legal action if they didn’t return the tokens within a week.
With their next move, the hacker continues to confuse the captives with his next move: sending an additional million OP tokens to Vitalik Buterin’s public wallet. This time, it was worth $824,000 Today’s transfer took place at 12:36 UTC. The remaining 18 million OP tokens are still in the hacker’s wallet.
It is not clear what the hacker was trying to do. This does little to explain the attacker’s motivations, whether they are to raise awareness or gain financial gains. Users have previously sent tokens to Buterin’s wallet for various reasons. Developers of the Shiba-Inu token sent $8 million worth of cryptocurrency to Buterin’s wallet last year as a way to eliminate half the token’s supply. Buterin disposed of 90% of the tokens and gave the remainder to Covid-related charities.
Optimism, Wintermute and Wintermute will be forced to wait for the next move by a hacker who so far appears to have no desire to cooperate.
