17 Million Optimism (OP) Returned Out of 20M Stolen in Recent Hack

• The OP Foundation is in the process of rescuing the 1 million OP delivered to Buterin.
• The corporation issued 20 million OP to the incorrect blockchain address.

Optimism (OP) tokens that were stolen by a hacker last week have been returned, 17 million of them. The Optimism Collective DAO was to be governed by tokens issued by the firm. In a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), those with the organization’s governance token can vote on its decisions.

1 Million OP Dubbed as ‘Bounty’

The OP was returned in 17 distinct 1-million token transactions beginning at 8 a.m. ET on Friday, according to Etherscan statistics. Even though they’ve transferred Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin an additional 1M, this hacker still has 1M of the cryptocurrency in their wallet. This reward, which hasn’t been returned, is being dubbed “a bounty,” and the OP Foundation is in the process of rescuing the 1 million OP delivered to Buterin.

Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling approach is referred to as “optimism.” This implies that it avoids the Ethereum mainnet, which is typically overcrowded. Layer-2 Optimism wallet addresses must be synchronized with layer-1 Ethereum addresses for this to operate effectively.

The corporation issued 20 million OP to the incorrect blockchain address after announcing the launch of its native Optimism (OP) token on June 1. The mistake led to the theft of 20 million OP tokens.

It recruited Wintermute, a leading crypto market maker, to issue the tokens in a widely anticipated airdrop. Although they had been transmitted to a layer-1 address in Wintermute that had not yet been synchronized to layer-2, they were all unavailable.

As far as Wintermute was concerned, the tokens would be secure. However, all 20 million tokens were stolen in a single day by an unknown hacker. At the time, they were valued $35 million. At $0.92 on Friday, when the tokens were returned to Optimism, they were valued nearly $15.6 million in total value.