- Wintermute discovered that it could not access the tokens due to technical oversight and an attacker took control of the contract on L2, retrieving the 20 million OP tokens.
- Optimism price posted double-digit losses since the hack.
- The attackers have cashed out 1 million OP tokens through Tornado Cash; it is not a white hat exploit.
Optimism price took a hit after a hacker stole 20 million of its tokens whilst in transit to market maker Wintermute. The attack was thought to have resulted from a technical oversight by the market maker. Optimism, which is transparent in its updates, informed the community that it had now reimbursed Wintermute with an additional 20 million replacement tokens post the attack.
Also read: Everything you need to know about Ethereum's Merge testnet upgrade
Optimism tokens lost to attack on market maker Wintermute
Optimism, a low-cost lightning-fast Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, informed the community of the loss of 20 million OP tokens from a malicious attack. Optimism engaged market maker Wintermute to provide liquidity for its tokens, sending them 20 million OP.
Due to a technical oversight, Wintermute discovered they could not gain control of the OP tokens since the smart contract was still on L1 and had not been updated to be deployed on Optimism. This technical oversight left Wintermute vulnerable to a hack, and a bad actor took charge of the situation, grabbing 20 million OP tokens on the L2 for themself.
One million out of the 20 was moved to Tornado Cash, enabling users to send and receive funds from a mixed source. The attacker converted OP to Ethereum and sent it to an unknown address via Tornado Cash.
Hey folks–in the interest of transparency, we'd like to share some details about an ongoing situation:https://t.co/915vIgRIJG
Summary below
— Optimism (✨_✨) (@optimismPBC) June 8, 2022
