Optimism Hacker Transfers Another 1M OP Tokens To ETH Founder But Confirms To Return Remaining 18M Coins

Optimism (OP) Hacker Transfers Another 1M To ETH Founder But Confirms To Return Remaining 18M Coins.

The hacker who exploited the technical glitch on Ethereum Layer-2 scaling platform Optimism and seized 20 million units of OP tokens, has sent another one million $OP to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum.

The development comes less than 24 hours after the attacker transferred 1 million OP tokens to the co-founder of Ethereum.

Following the development, the attacker has transferred a total of 2 million units of OP to Buterin, thus implying that the hacker is still left with 18 million OP tokens in his wallet.

Interestingly, the hacker added a message in the second transfer to Buterin, stating that the 18 million OP tokens will be returned.

The development was first reported by Twitter-based crypto media outlet Wu Blockchain, noting that:

“The OP hacker address 0x60B28637879B5a09D21B68040020FFbf7dbA5107 sent another transaction to the Vitalik wallet, and left a message saying that 18 million OPs would be returned.”

The OP hacker address 0x60B28637879B5a09D21B68040020FFbf7dbA5107 sent another transaction to the Vitalik wallet, and left a message saying that 18 million OPs would be returned.https://t.co/CQItHdL1qK

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 10, 2022

Unclear Intention

It is not clear why the attacker has chosen to send another amount of the seized OP tokens to Buterin; however, there is a possibility that the hacker acted that way just to send a message to the Winterminute team.

Recall that the Winterminute team threatened to hunt down the attacker if the seized OP tokens are not returned, as noted in a statement, saying:

“You have one week to consider being a whitehat. In case the above doesn’t happen, we are 100% committed to returning all the funds, tracking the person(s) responsible for the exploit, fully doxxing them, and delivering them to the corresponding juridical system.”

OP Price Performance After the Hack

After the attacker took advantage of the technical glitch in Optimism protocol and seized the 20 million units of $OP, many feared that the seized tokens would be dumped in the market, thus causing its price to crash.

Based on this, many OP investors hurriedly offloaded the asset, causing its price to dip to an all-time low of $0.72.

In contrast to what many expected, the attacker decided to hold the asset class and transfer some portions to an address belonging to the Ethereum co-founder.

This singular act gave traders yet another confidence, as seen in the price of the asset. At press time, $OP is trading at $0.91 across major exchanges, up 5% in the last 24 hours.