IOTA founder wants to personally compensate victims of hacker attack

While IOTA is waiting for the restart of the Mainnet, scheduled for tomorrow (March 10), a solution for the victims of the cyber attack on the official Trinity Wallet is emerging. Co-founder David Sønstebø has announced that he will use his personal savings to make compensation payments.

The seemingly endless saga surrounding the collapse of IOTA’s ecosystem is heading for a conciliatory end: David Sønstebø, chairman of the IOTA Foundation and co-founder of the project, wants to dig deep into his own pocket to compensate those affected by the hostile attack on the official Trinity Wallet. In a letter Sønstebø writes that he will use a “substantial part” of his private holdings in IOTA to replace stolen IOTA. Meanwhile, IOTA is preparing to restart Mainnet tomorrow, Tuesday, to allow financial transactions to be carried out at IOTA again after a break of almost a month.

IOTA boss David Sønstebø becomes a white knight

David Sønstebø was one of the founding members of IOTA in the mid-2010s and today he holds the important position at the top of the IOTA Foundation. One can speculate about his private fortune, but the dispute with co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo (CFB) alone suggests that David Sønstebø is certainly one of the multimillionaires. So far, the Trinity Hack at IOTA has resulted in a loss amount equivalent to about 2.2 million US dollars (which, however, is offset by the fact that the transactions are being unwound). If this remains the case, Sønstebø will probably be able to cope with the expenses. He himself emphasises that his private decision was made to ensure the continued existence of the IOTA Foundation. IOTA is closer than ever to becoming the technological standard for the Internet of Things (IoT). Sønstebø remarked that he feels personally responsible. Details of how the compensation payments will be handled will be made public in the coming days after consultation with lawyers.

Meanwhile, the IOTA Foundation continues to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in Berlin and elsewhere to bring the thief(s) to justice. They had discovered a serious security hole in IOTA’s official Trinity Wallet, which was hidden in the integration of the financial services provider Moonpay. This allowed them to read seeds and transfer funds to their own addresses. IOTA has now released a new version of the Trinity Wallet and asked all users to transfer their funds to new, secure addresses using a migration tool.

IOTA before the restart – how are the markets reacting?

David Sønstebø’s generous gesture certainly serves the purpose of reassuring investors in IOTA and the market. Because after the debacle with the Trinity Wallet as a central part of the ecosystem, IOTA is all about regaining trust. IOTA has been at a standstill for four weeks and when the central coordinator is reactivated tomorrow as planned, investors will look forward to seeing where IOTA’s share price is heading. Since the hack became known, it has lost around 40 percent; IOTA is currently quoted at around 0.19 US dollars. Is IOTA already “too big to fail” and will investors continue to support it after the restart? Or are investors now withdrawing their capital en masse, driving IOTA towards Shitcoin? Soon I will know more, both scenarios are conceivable.

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