Optimism Hacker promises to return 18M OP tokens and sends another 1M to Buterin Buterin has received another batch of one million OP tokens, including a message that the attacker believes in Ethereum’s co-founder. The attacker who stole the 20 million coins also promised to return them to Wintermute or Optimism.

yesterday the drama that unfolded recently between Optimism and Wintermute — a liquidity provider partner. The Ethereum Layer-2 solution was supposed to send 20 million OP tokens to Wintermute’s addresses, but the latter provided the wrong one. Wintermute provided an Ethereum Layer-1 address instead of the Optimism Layer-2 account. This resulted in the inaccessibility of assets due to multisig tech. Wintermute had been considering switching to Layer-2 in order to receive the funds. However, an unknown perpetrator beat Wintermute to the punch and stole all 20 million tokens. The firm accepted responsibility for its error and requested that the attacker return the funds. They were also asked to reveal their identities and pursue them in court. This seems to have had an effect, as the hacker sent one-million tokens to a wallet belonging Vitalik Buterin, which is somewhat surprising. Today, they made another such transaction, but this one carried a special message for Ethereum’s co-founder. It stated that the attacker believed in Buterin, and asked him for his advice on how to use the funds. As far as Wintermute and Optimism go, the hacker said they were “sorry” and added that they only had “18M, and this is what I can return.”