<a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/ropsten-testnet-completes-merge-to-proof-of-stake/">Ethereum</a> scaling solution Optimism announced today that 20 million in OP governance tokens have been stolen by attackers.

https://twitter.com/optimismPBC/status/1534631771421253638
<h2 class="post__title">Optimism Loses 20M Tokens</h2>
The airdrop of first-time governance tokens from Ethereum scaling solution Optimism suffered the exploit, with cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute taking responsibility for the lapse. Optimism created OP as the governance token for its DAO, and hired market maker Wintermute to distribute the 20 million OP tokens in an airdrop to Optimism Collective stakeholders to continue its launch. The loan was initially deployed on Wintermute’s wallets on Optimism, but Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said in a <a href="https://gov.optimism.io/t/message-to-optimism-community-from-wintermute/2595" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">statement</a> that they made a serious error.

The company in preparation to launch a native OP token for the Optimism Collective DAO accidentally sent 20 million tokens to the wrong blockchain address. The error resulted in the theft of all 20 million OP tokens by a hacker. The attacker cashed out 1 million of the stolen OP tokens into Ethereum, and then transferred those funds to an unknown address via Tornado Cash.  The remaining 19 million tokens are still in the attacker’s wallet. In the meantime, Wintermute has offered to accept the incident as a white hat exploit if the hacker agreed to return 19 million tokens within one week. The offer was made before the hacker transferred the 1 million tokens.

ETH Layer-2 Solution Optimism Loses 20M Tokens in Latest Exploit

Optimism has lost 20M tokens, which were stolen by attackers with cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute taking responsibility for the lapse.

Jafrin is a cryptocurrency journalist/researcher fascinated by the world of decentralization. She is hopeful towards blockchain’s innovation and its potential to reshape the world for good. Currently, she is bringing out the best of cryptosphere via covering the latest ins and outs of the blockchain space.

ETH Layer-2 Solution Optimism Loses 20M Tokens in Latest Exploit

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