Worldcoin, a developer of Tools for Humanity, has been deploying a significant number of Safes to the Optimism (OP) network recently. This news was announced by Tiago Sada, the head of product for Worldcoin, through a social media post on June 27. The deployments caught the attention of Twitter users, who were curious about the purpose behind them and who was responsible for them. Some users speculated that it could be a Sybil attack or a technique to farm addresses and profit from coins sent to the wrong address.
To provide some context, a Safe, previously known as “Gnosis Safe,” is a multisignature smart contract wallet. It is commonly used by development teams to ensure that multiple members of the team must approve each transaction that involves spending funds or upgrading an app. Safes are also used in some consumer wallets that employ account abstraction, such as those that offer gas-free transactions.
Worldcoin is known for extensively using Safes as it provides gas-free transactions exclusively to verified humans. Recently, the Worldcoin team announced that they are migrating their app from Polygon to the Optimism network.
Between June 21 and June 27, an Optimism address with the identifier 0x86c5608362b3fbbeb721140472229392f754ef87 created over 50 subaccounts. These subaccounts performed between 10,000 and 15,000 transactions, most of which consisted of creating new Safe wallets. On June 26, an on-chain researcher named Spreek noticed these unusual transactions and reported them to the community through a Twitter thread.
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Spreek expressed confusion about the transactions, admitting that Safes were like wizardry to them. In response, Luigi.eth, a contributor to the decentralized autonomous organization GnosisDAO, stated that the DAO had alerted the Gnosis team, although they didn’t consider the transactions to be malicious.
The Twitter thread caught the attention of Will Sheehan, the founder of Parsec Finance, who cryptically hinted that he had an idea about what the deployments could be. This led to further speculation among his followers. One user suggested that it might be a Sybil attack, while another thought it could be an attempt to farm addresses that might receive funds mistakenly in the future.
However, some users on Spreek and Sheehan’s threads theorized that the deployments were not an attack but rather related to Worldcoin’s migration to Optimism. One user mentioned “eyeball coin,” referring to Worldcoin, and implied that it could be the cause of the transactions.
Shortly after the speculation began, Tiago Sada from Tools for Humanity revealed the true purpose behind the deployments. He reshared Spreek’s original post and stated, “Deploying more Safes – steady lads,” confirming that Worldcoin was indeed responsible for the transactions related to the migration.
With this information, Optimism users can breathe a sigh of relief. The network does not appear to be under a massive Sybil attack or involved in an address-farming scam, at least not in relation to these transactions.
It is worth mentioning that Optimism recently upgraded to its new version called “Bedrock” on June 6. This upgrade brought lower fees and shorter deposit times, resulting in a significant increase in transaction count since the upgrade.
In conclusion, the recent surge in Safe deployments to the Optimism network was caused by Worldcoin as part of their migration from Polygon. The initial speculation about a possible attack or scam now seems unfounded, as it was simply a planned operation by Worldcoin. This demonstrates the importance of accurate information and avoiding unnecessary panic in the cryptocurrency community.
