In 2022, the Wormhole deck suffered a spectacular theft of $320 million, making it one of the industry's most high-profile exploits. Recently, an unexpected situation came to light: the hacker behind this exploit was initially considered eligible to receive an airdrop worth $50,000 in newly launched W tokens. According to Pland, a subscriber to social network X, commented on 4 April that the Wormhole team had not excluded certain wallet addresses linked to this incident from the list of airdrop recipients.
Subsequent checks carried out by Airdrop.link, a Solana-based service, confirmed that four wallet addresses were indeed able to claim this Wormhole airdrop. The hackers would have been able to obtain around 31,642 W tokens, based on current market values. However, an independent check by Cointelegraph revealed that these addresses were no longer eligible, suggesting a swift response from the Wormhole team to correct this anomaly.
Although Wormhole did not respond to requests for comment, analysis of the transactions via Solana's block explorer, Solana.fm, confirmed the association of these wallets with the 2022 exploit.
The Wormhole exploit in February 2022 resulted in a loss of $321 million and marks one of the largest thefts in the history of cryptos. However, a recovery operation carried out in 2023 by Jump Crypto and Oasis.app recovered $225 million worth of stolen assets, demonstrating the community's ability to respond effectively to such incidents.
Against a backdrop of recovery, Wormhole has announced a substantial airdrop of more than 675 million W tokens, or nearly $850 million. This distribution is designed to reward loyal users and marks a significant step in rebuilding trust within the Wormhole community.
