The wormhole bridge hacker was eligible for a short airdrop from 2022.
In the year The hacker behind Wormhole Bridge's famous $320 million exploit in 2022 was initially deemed eligible for an airdrop that will see him claim $50,000 in newly launched W tokens.
In a post to X on April 4, an anonymous researcher claimed that Plan Wormhole's team forgot to exclude multiple wallet addresses linked to the heist, which saw hackers steal $321 million in crypto from Cross-Chain Bridge in 2022.
According to information cited by Solana-based airdrop checker Airdrop.link later in an April 4 post by Dagen News to X, a total of four wallet addresses linked to the exploit were able to temporarily request the wormhole's airdrop.
Had the hacker chosen to claim their airdrops, they would have been eligible for around 31,642 Wormhole (W) tokens, worth around $50,000 at current prices.
Cointelegraph independently verified wallet addresses on Airdrop.link; However, we found that they were no longer eligible, suggesting that the wormhole team had already plugged the loophole.
Cointelegraph contacted Wormhole but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
All four eligible wallet addresses were identified with the 2022 Wormhole exploit by Solana block explorer Solana.fm.
Related: Wormhole interrupts 1B with cross-chain messages before token launch
Wormhole Bridge In February 2022, it was leveraged at an impressive $321 million, making it one of the largest acquisitions in the history of the crypto industry.
However, in February 2023, Web3 infrastructure firm Leap crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Oasis.app conducted a “counter exploit” against the Wormhole Protocol hacker.
The two organizations have successfully recovered a total of $225 million in digital assets from wormhole exploits and returned them to safe wallets.
On April 3, Wormhole announced that it would be airdropping more than 675 million — worth about $850 million at current prices — of its new Wormhole (W) tokens to eligible users.
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