Oasis Counter-Exploits Wormhole Hacker

Quick Take

• Oasis exploits its own contracts after a court order.
• Core developer Danny Ryan reflects on Ethereum.
• Flashbots releases details of MEV-Boost changes in Capella.
• ZigZag announces an airdrop to ~100k wallets.

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Oasis Counter-Exploits Wormhole Hacker

According to a scoop from Blockworks, venture capital firm Jump Crypto and DeFi protocol Oasis successfully coordinated a counter-exploit that resulted in the retrieval of 120,000 ether stolen during the 2022 Wormhole exploit. Jump Crypto, which has close ties to Solana projects, bailed out Wormhole in 2022 by replacing the stolen funds.

Oasis later stated that it received an order from the High Court of England and Wales on February 21st, which demanded its cooperation in the counter-exploit. That same day, Oasis added a new signer to its multisig, which appears to be Jump Crypto. The Wormhole hacker had recently opened positions on Oasis with the stolen funds.

The new signer then executed a transaction that tricked the Oasis contracts to allow it to transfer the Wormhole hacker’s positions into a wallet that is controlled by Jump Crypto. The retrieval is currently worth $140 million. Oasis says it is working to patch the vulnerability that made the counter-exploit possible.

Danny Ryan Reflects On Ethereum

Ethereum core developer Danny Ryan published his reflections on Ethereum, covering research areas to focus on, incentive alignment, and the L2 thesis. Danny says The Merge is the most significant upgrade in blockchain history, adding that it proves Ethereum can achieve huge technological goals in a largely decentralized manner.

Danny highlights PoS evolution, data availability sampling (DAS), and MEV as key research areas to focus on in the near to medium term. He also mentions the difference between working on Ethereum and building on top of Ethereum, adding that there was a “sour feeling” toward wealth accumulating to layers built upon L1 teams’ backs.

Dependence on Ethereum has led exchanges, dapps, and L2 teams to participate in the EIP process. Danny says maintaining a client and core infrastructure is a great entry point into having a voice in the governance process. He is open to welcoming new client teams, especially clients that bring geographic and jurisdictional diversity.

MEV-Boost Changes In Capella

Flashbots released documentation covering changes to MEV-Boost during Capella, an upgrade to Ethereum’s consensus layer (CL) that introduces withdrawals. The Capella upgrade requires changes to MEV-boost so that block builders and relays can handle withdrawals properly. Flashbots also released MEV-Boost alpha v1.5.0.

After Capella, block builders will need to submit blocks with the correct withdrawals to the relay. Relays will then need to verify withdrawals received from block builder submissions, build a signed blinded Beacon block, and return the full payload with the withdrawals. Flashbots has successfully tested the changes on Goerli and Zhejiang.

~100k Users Eligible For ZigZag Airdrop

ZigZag, an order book DEX, released its airdrop criteria for users on the exchange. The airdrop was automatically sent to eligible users with the exception of the trader airdrop, which is ongoing. ZigZag is airdropping 35% of its token supply to roughly 100k wallet addresses. The snapshot for zkSync traders was taken on December 31st and required four unique days with swaps with at least 30 days between the first and last swap. The airdrop did not include traders on Arbitrum.