Optimism Loses 20 Million Tokens After Wintermute Recovery Process Attacked

Market maker Wintermute announced today that in preparing to launch a native OP token for the Optimism Collective DAO, it accidentally sent 20 million tokens to the wrong blockchain address. 

In the case of the Optimism transaction, the 20 million tokens were sent to Wintermute’s Ethereum (L1) address, but because that address had not yet been deployed, or synced, to an Optimism (L2) address, the funds were left floating, inaccessible, on L1.

Wintermute took full responsibility for the error when it was discovered on May 30. Wintermute staff also told the Optimism Foundation that the funds were potentially retrievable through a high-risk, one-time operation. They also insisted that the funds, if not accessible, were nonetheless secure: no one external could access them. 

The hacker then sold off one million OP tokens for ETH, and retained the other 19 million. They then went silent, and haven’t been heard from since.  

As part of accepting responsibility, Wintermute has committed to buying back all tokens sold by the hacker. Wintermute already bought back the one million OP tokens sold last week. Optimism says that so far, the stolen tokens have not been used to influence their DAO’s governance, but that they are monitoring the situation. 

By Amy Liu

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