Breaking: Optimism Hacker Intends To Return 18 Mln OP Tokens

The Optimism (OP) hacker on Friday sent another 1 million OP tokens to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet address and left a message saying that they intend to return 18 million OP tokens. Moreover, they stated they believe in Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin and just wanted to know his opinion.

The hacker had sent 1 million OP tokens to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet address on Thursday.

Optimism (OP) Hacker Turns Out to be Whitehat

An Etherscan data on the Optimistic browser showed that the hacker has transferred another 1 million OP tokens to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet address and left a message in the “input data box.” The message reads:

“Hello, Vitalik, I believe in you, just want to know your opinion on this. BTW, help to verify the return address and I will return the remaining after you. And hello Wintermute, sorry, I only have 18M and this is what I can return.
Stay Optimistic!”

The attacker has confirmed themself as a whitehat. Moreover, they asked developers to share a return address to send the remaining Optimism (OP) tokens after verification of the address. Also, confirms to Wintermute that he has only 18 million OP tokens to return.

Wintermute, in a public message on Thursday, offered one-week time to the hacker to consider turning whitehat, urging the hacker to return stolen OP tokens. Moreover, the team is impressed with the hacker and offered consulting opportunities or other forms of cooperation in the future.

Optimism (OP) Price Jumps Nearly 25% in a Day

The Optimism (OP) price has jumped nearly 10% after the hacker agreed to return the OP tokens. The rally was supported by massive trading volume in the last 2 hours. At the time of writing, the OP price is trading at $0.9207, up nearly 25% since bottoming out at the 0.73 level.

The Optimism hack caused the OP token price to plunge more than 20%, making an all-time low of $0.7142. However, after the hacker transferred 1 million tokens to Vitalik Buterin and Wintermute promised to return funds, the price recovered most losses.