Optimism Layer-2 Solution Lost 20 Million Tokens In Interlayer Snafu

The Optimism Layer-2 solution lost over 20 million tokens in the Interlayer Snafu and the thief sold off a million of the tokens as launch partner Wintermute tried to coax the hacker into cooperating so let’s have a closer look at our latest cryptocurrency news.

The Optimism Layer-2 solution provider failed to sync its address to an Ethereum address before the bigger transfer. The stolen OP tokens were valued at $35 million when the hack occurred with 19 million tokens still missing. The company behind the scaling protocol announced that while preparing to launch the native token for the Optimism Collective DAO, it sent 20 million tokens to the wrong address and the error resulted in a theft of all 20 million tokens by the hacker.

Hey folks–in the interest of transparency, we'd like to share some details about an ongoing situation:https://t.co/915vIgRIJG

Summary below 🧵👇

— Optimism (✨🔴_🔴✨) (@optimismPBC) June 8, 2022

The decentralized autonomous organizations are blockchain-based collectives that vote on the decisions via a native token and Optimism created OP as the governance token for the DAO and hired the marekt maker Wintermute to distribute the tokens in the airdrop to the Collective stakeholders to continue the launch. Optimism sent two transactions to Wintermute before sending the tokens last week and both of the transactions were confirmed by Wintermute. Optimism sent the tokens but discovered that they were inaccessible.

Optimism is a layer-2 scaling solution that is built on the Ethereum network. The second layer solutions allow for faster transactions as they bypass the congested ETH network but such convention brings greater risks. In the case of the Optimism transaction, the 20 million tokens were sent to the Wintermute Ethereum address because the address hadn’t been deployed or synced yet, and the funds were left inaccessible on layer 1.

Wintermute took full responsibility for the error and told Optimism that the funds were potentially retrievable via a high-risk one-time operation. Optimism says that the stolen tokens so far haven’t been used to influence their DAO governance but they are monitoring the situation. Both Witnermute and Optimism made multiple attempts to contact the hacker but so far they haven’t gotten an answer. Wintermute added:

“The way the attack has been performed has been rather impressive and we can even consider consulting opportunities or other forms of cooperation in future.”

One positive thing is that if the remaining 19 million OP tokens are not returned in a week, the company will turn over evidence of the hacker’s identity to law enforcement. What is the evidence these companies possess and can the hacker be incentivized to come clean remains to be seen. In the meantime, the predicament seems to have taken a toll on the Optimism and typically cheery minded reputation so Wintermute wrote:

“You have one week to consider being a whitehat. Consider your options, and choose to be good and optimistic instead of living in fear.”