Having stolen 20 million OPs from Wintermute, the hacker sent Vitalik Buterin one million coins and made it clear that he was ready to return the remaining funds. After a while, he transferred 17 million OP to the market maker.

On May 30, the day before the airdrop, Optimism developers sent 20 million OPs to Wintermute’s stated multi-signature wallet. The market maker was chosen as the liquidity provider after listing the token on exchanges.

Due to an internal error, the Wintermute team was unable to access the funds. However, this was done by a hacker who took control of the assets. Spent 1 million coins of the total amount.

On June 8, Wintermute released a statement in which he spoke about the incident and suggested that the hacker return the remaining assets to the specified wallet to avoid legal consequences.

“We are prepared to see this as a white-hat exploit. Also, his attack method was quite impressive. “We may even consider consulting opportunities and other forms of cooperation in the future,” the market maker team said.

On June 10, the attacker sent 1M OPs to an Optimism address believed to be related to the Ethereum co-founder. Signed the transaction:

“Hi Vitalik. I believe you, I just want to know your opinion on this. In the meantime, help me check the return address and I will ship the rest after you.

The hacker also reached out to Wintermute and apologized for only being able to return 18 million coins.

“Stay optimistic!” ended his message with the slogan of Optimism community.

At the time of writing, the assets Buterin transferred to his alleged wallet remain static.

Recall that in August 2021, a hacker returned all the stolen digital assets worth $611 million to the Poly Network network protocol, which he had withdrawn during one of the largest attacks in the history of the crypto industry.