Ethereum Layer2 Protocol Optimism Loses $32 Million due to Interlayer Blunder June 2022

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20 million Oprimisim [OP] tokens accidently sent to the wrong address were intercepted by a hacker. Out of the tokens valued at $32M at the time of the hack, 19M tokens remain missing.  Could other Layer2 solutions suffer the same issues?

Optimism may have a good reason to be pessimistic.

The company behind the Ethereum scaling protocol announced today that in preparing to launch a native OP token for the Optimism Collective DAO, it accidentally sent 20 million tokens to the wrong blockchain address. The error resulted in the theft of all 20 million OP tokens by a hacker.

DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, are blockchain-based collectives that vote on decisions, often via a native token. Optimism created OP as the governance token for its DAO, and hired market maker Wintermute to more efficiently distribute the 20 million OP tokens in an airdrop to Optimism Collective stakeholders to continue its launch.

Optimism sent two test transactions to Wintermute before sending over the 20 million OP tokens last week, and both transactions were confirmed by Wintermute. Optimism then sent the tokens over, only for Wintermute to discover that they were now inaccessible.

How? Optimism is a layer-2 scaling solution built on top of the Ethereum network. Second layer solutions permit faster transactions as they bypass the oft-congested Ethereum network. But such convenience also brings greater risk.

Via this site Ethereum Layer2 Protocol Optimism Loses $32 Million due to Interlayer Blunder June 2022