Optimism's BitBTC bridge saved from exploit but Bitcoin falls below $19,000

In a major piece of news, thanks to a sharp-eyed Twitter user, the cross-chain bridge between BitBTC and Optimism was saved from a potentially costly exploit. This Twitter user was none other than the tech lead from another popular L2 called Arbitrum on the 18th of October, calling the bridge 'trivially vulnerable’.

He had been trying to reach out to the team behind the project to repair the bug in the system, even tried messaging them on their Telegram channels but to no avail when he decided to put it up on Twitter.

This was a custom cross-chain bridge, that offered a ramp for users to sent assets between Ethereum layer-2 network, Optimism and BitAnt's decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

However, despite this close call - it is well known that the technology and security behind bridges is still in the development mode. Just this year back in February, we saw Wormhole's $375 million exploit which was quickly followed up by the $625 million exploit of Axie Infinity's Ronin bridge next month. As recently as in August, the Nomad bridge was also attacked and $190 million worth of funds were lost.

But amid all this, Bitcoin managed to touch a sub-$19,000 level once again on the 20th of October, touching $18,923 as of writing.

Read more: Top Crypto News Today: Optimism’s BitBTC bridge saved from exploit but Bitcoin falls below $19,000