Wormhole bridge hacker from 2022 was briefly eligible for the recent airdrop

The hacker that once stole over $320 million from the Wormhole bridge appears to have been initially eligible to claim a Wormhole airdrop that would have netted them $50,000.

The hacker behind the famed $320 million exploit of the Wormhole bridge in 2022 was initially deemed eligible for an airdrop that would have seen the exploiter claim $50,000 in newly-launched W tokens. 

In an April 4 post to X, pseudonymous researcher Pland claimed that the Wormhole team had forgotten to exclude a number of wallet addresses affiliated with an exploit that saw hackers steal $321 million in crypto from the cross-chain bridge in 2022.

According to data from Solana-based airdrop checker Airdrop.link later cited by Degen News in an April 4 post to X, a total of four wallet addresses were temporarily able to claim Wormhole’s airdrop.

If the hacker had elected to claim their airdrops, they would have been eligible for roughly 31,642 Wormhole (W) tokens, worth around $50,000 at current prices.

Cointelegraph independently checked the wallet addresses on airdrop.link however found that they were no longer eligible, suggesting that the Wormhole team may have already plugged the gap.

Cointelegraph contacted Wormhole but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

All four of the eligible wallet addresses were flagged as being linked to the 2022 Wormhole exploit by Solana block explorer Solana.fm.

Related: Wormhole crosses 1B in cross-chain messages ahead of token launch

The Wormhole bridge was exploited for a staggering $321 million in February of 2022, rendering it one of the largest hacks in the history of the crypto industry.

However, in February 2023, Web3 infrastructure firm Jump Crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Oasis.app conducted a ‘counter exploit’ on the Wormhole protocol hacker.

The two firms managed to successfully claw back a total of $225 million in digital assets from the wormhole exploiter and subsequently returned them to safe wallets.

On April 3, Wormhole announced that it would be airdropping more than 675 million — worth roughly $850 million at current prices — of its new Wormhole (W) tokens to eligible users.