Ethereum’s Layer-2 Solution Optimism Lost 20M OP tokens!

It is revealed on June 8, 2022, that 20 million Optimism (OP) tokens have been stolen by a hacker after the token launch partner Wintermute accidentally sent the tokens to an inaccessible blockchain account.
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According to Optimism’s report, one million tokens worth about $1.3 million at the time of the hack were sold on June 5 while another one million valued at about $730,000 were transferred to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's public wallet on June 10, 2022, at 12:26 am UTC. The other 18 million tokens remain in the hacker’s wallet and can be sold or used to influence their DAO’s governance at any time.
The traumatic event took place on May 26, 2022, but was not reported to the community until recently.In preparation for the OP token launch, the Optimism Foundation hired Wintermute, a crypto market-making firm, to offer initial liquidity for OP tokens, thus enhancing the experience of users acquiring OP.
As more liquidity implies less volatility, Optimism loaned Wintermute 20 million OP to smooth the token launch, and after conducting two successful test transactions to Wintermute, Optimism then sent the tokens over. That’s when Wintermute realized that the tokens were now inaccessible.According to Wintermute's explanation, the 20 million tokens were transmitted to Wintermute's Ethereum (Layer-1) address, but because that address had not yet been deployed, or synchronized, to an Optimism (Layer-2) address, the funds were left floating and inaccessible on Layer 1.The error resulted in a bad actor successfully taking control of the contract on Layer-2.Right after the problem was made aware by Wintermute, it attempted to remedy the situation by beginning “a recovery operation with the goal to deploy the L1 multisig contract to the same address on L2,” but it was too late. Wintermute accepted full responsibility for the exploit in a statement to the Optimism community on June 9. As part of its “best efforts to smoothen the effects” of price volatility, the firm claimed that it will undertake OP tokens buybacks equal to the amount the exploiter sells.Wintermute's statement received generally positive responses, with people praising the company for being forthright about the problem and accepting responsibility for what happened.In the short term, an additional 20 million OP has been granted to Wintermute by the Optimism team so that they can continue their liquidity provision but such efforts are just temporary, said Optimism.Take a deeper dive into Ethereum’s Layer-2 Scaling Solution Optimism here.
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