As a result of the error, Optimism developers lost 20 million OP governance tokens. The funds were sent to an erroneous address, through which the attackers subsequently gained access to the tokens.
How explained developers, 20 million OP tokens were intended for the cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute. Back on May 26, two test transactions were made, which turned out to be successful, after which the funds were transferred to the Wintermute address. However, it turned out that the developers used the address of the Wintermute smart contract for the first level of Ethereum, and the transaction was carried out on the Optimism network, where the market maker’s smart contract had not yet been deployed.
So the tokens were sent to the wrong address. After discovering the problem, the Wintermute developers “began an operation to restore access to the tokens,” however, the hackers managed to occupy this address faster and gain access to the funds:
“The attacker was able to place a multi-signature contract on a second layer solution prior to the repair operation, with different initialization parameters. He gained control of 20 million OP tokens.”
To Wintermute’s credit, management took took responsibility and stated that the market maker will buy back the amount of OP tokens that the hackers will sell. To date, the attackers have sold 1 million tokens worth $1.3 million. In addition, they sent OP in the amount of $730,000 to Vitalik Buterin.
The developers of Optimism said they will provide another 20 million OP to Wintermute so “they can continue their work.” However, this will only temporarily solve the problem. Also, the developers of the solution considered the possibility of returning the lost tokens through a hard fork, but it was decided to abandon this path.
Recall that at the beginning of the month, Optimism developers began distributing OP tokens to active users and community members. After that, network failures were recorded.
Source: Bits
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