The individual responsible for the notorious hack that siphoned over 80,000 ETH from Wormhole in 2022 briefly had access to claim an undisclosed quantity of airdropped W tokens, as revealed by pseudonymous blockchain researcher Pland. Pland humorously remarked on social media that Wormhole overlooked excluding the exploiter from the airdrop.

Degen News corroborated this discovery, revealing that four Solana wallets linked to the hacker could potentially claim $52,700 worth of W tokens. Austin Federa, head of strategy at Solana Foundation, found amusement in the situation, describing it as a remarkable demonstration of protocol neutrality.

However, community scrutiny prompted the Wormhole team to swiftly revoke eligibility for these addresses. CryptoSlate verified this exclusion through the Airdrop Checker website.

Wormhole's release of its native W token on April 3 garnered significant attention but also attracted malicious actors spreading phishing links about the event. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT uncovered numerous accounts posting phishing scams, while web3 security firm Scam Sniffer reported detecting over 100 phishing sites related to Wormhole.

Despite initial excitement, W's value plummeted by over 25% within its first 24 hours of trading as airdrop recipients began cashing in their assets. Although the digital asset briefly surged to $1.59, it subsequently dropped to $1.15 at the time of reporting. Nevertheless, major exchanges like Binance and OKX have listed W, contributing to its trading volume ranking among the top 10 most traded assets in recent days.