2 years ago
The inventor of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin was the unintended recipient of 1 cardinal OP tokens from this network’s scalability solution Optimism. The squad down this task addressed concerns astir a imaginable exploit related to the motorboat of their governance token.
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As clarified by Optimism, they entered a woody with liquidity supplier Wintermute to “facilitate a smoother acquisition for users” looking to bargain OP and enactment successful the project’s governance model. As portion of the agreement, Optimism sent 20 cardinal OP tokens to a multi-signature address.
However, the liquidity supplier was incapable to entree the funds arsenic it discovered the code was designed arsenic an Ethereum layer-1 multi-sig without an Optimism, which operates arsenic a 2nd furniture solution, astute declaration deployment. About this, the liquidity supplier said:
As we communicated the wallet code to the Optimism team, we made a superior error.
The Optimism partnered began a “recovery operation” to summation entree to the funds, arsenic they concluded with Wintermute that the funds “were perchance retrievable and that cipher different than Wintermute could retrieve those funds”, the liquidity supplier said successful a statement.
The betterment cognition was scheduled, the liquidity supplier clarified, for June 7th, 2022, but a hacker bushed them to it. The squad down the Ethereum 2nd furniture solution explained:
Unfortunately, an attacker was capable to deploy the multisig to L2 with antithetic initialization parameters earlier these efforts were completed, assuming ownership of the 20m OP.
Furthermore, Optimism claims the attacker began selling the stolen funds. As overmuch arsenic 1 cardinal OP tokens person been “dumped” into the marketplace from the hacker’s address: 0x4f3a120E72C76c22ae802D129F599BFDbc31cb81.
At the clip of writing, this code inactive holds 18 cardinal OP tokens oregon $14 cardinal with an further $3 successful USD Coin (USDC). However, caller developments made the full incidental weirder.
Why Sent Part Of The Funds To Vitalik Buterin?Developer Yoav Weiss, Security Fellow astatine the Ethereum Foundation, provided different details astir the caller events. He believes the attacker could beryllium a Whitehat hacker.
He based this presumption connected the information that the attacker waited 4 days earlier taking ownership of the OP funds. During that time, determination was a hazard that Wintermute mightiness person deployed the solution to retrieve the funds.
In addition, the attacker hasn’t moved the funds, arsenic Optimism believed. In step, the inventor of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin received 1 cardinal tokens and Weiss himself received different 1 cardinal OP.
And the crippled thickens. As I was penning this explainer, the attacker delegated the 1M OP voting powerfulness to *me*: https://t.co/75VPmS91J5
Thank you for delegating 
Hint: no, I'm not the attacker and I don't cognize who is. But present guessing it's a whitehat.
— yoav.eth (@yoavw) June 9, 2022
Projects often nonstop Vitalik Buterin tokens to observe the motorboat of their platforms, oregon to “burn them”, arsenic the inventor of Ethereum seldom uses them. The information that Weiss is simply a information chap seems to beryllium portion of a connection from the attacker.
The squad down Optimism claims the hacker has not utilized the funds for immoderate enactment related to its governance model. If this concern changes, they assertion further measures volition beryllium taken alongside the OP community.
Other measures are available, but the Optimism squad refuses to enforce them and jeopardizes the project’s imaginativeness of a permissionless network. They concluded:
(…) incidents similar this are the increasing pains of an evolving industry. This is simply a reminder to everyone dealing with contracts crossed antithetic chains that the information assumptions of 1 concatenation bash not needfully transportation implicit to another.
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At the clip of writing, OP’s terms trades astatine $0.8 with a 16% nonaccomplishment successful the past 24-hours.
OP’s terms trends to the downside connected the 1-hour chart. Source: OPUSDT Tradingview
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