Optimism hacker appears and says he could return the stolen goods.

The person who stole 20 million units of the optimism (OP) token broke his silence. Hours ago, he sent a transaction to Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin, along with a message in which he assures that he will return much of what he stole.

"Hi Vitalik, I believe in you, I just want to know your opinion on this. By the way, help me verify the sender's address and I'll return the rest," the message reads. It adds, "Hi Wintermute, sorry, I only have 18 million [tokens] and this is what I can return. stay optimistic!".

Apparently, part of the funds if will stay in various DeFi protocols and other blockchain projects, especially the large part that according to the investigation has been used to invest in Ownex, Minosis Token and LunaFi.

The theft had occurred before the airdrop that benefited users of Ethereum's second layer, Optimism. The attacker took advantage of a vulnerability in the decentralized finance platform (DeFi) Wintermute to take the tokens, valued at nearly USD 17 million.

The fact that the event had been kept secret for several days caused unease among many users of this scalability solution, as they considered it a lack of transparency on the part of the organization.

Now, with the promise to return a large part of the stolen tokens, the market has reacted. On price tracking portals such as CoinMarketCap it can be seen that OP's price increased slightly in the last hours, just when the hacker broke the silence.

Now, we will have to wait if Buterin gives any response to his message and if, indeed, the attacker keeps his promise.