Following the Bybit hack attack, certain factions calling for a network rollback faced harsh criticism from the Ethereum community. The proposal, deemed a violation of the core tenets of decentralization, ignited a significant debate from technical and ethical perspectives.

The Bybit hack attack that stirred up controversies in the cryptocurrency market led to deep divides within the Ethereum community. After allegations of North Korean hacker group Lazarus stealing around $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH) from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, some market participants brought up the idea of a network rollback. However, the Ethereum community and core developer teams vehemently opposed this proposal.

Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX and a known Ethereum major holder, challenged Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on the X social media platform, asking whether he would be in favor of reverting the chain. Hayes’ post drew sharp reactions from community members advocating for Ethereum’s decentralized nature. Users highlighted that such a move would contradict the fundamental principles of the network.

Ethereum’s Structure and the Rollback Debate

Technically, the Ethereum network cannot be reversed as the system has a structure that stores users’ ETH assets based on a computational model. Therefore, a protocol change is required to return the stolen funds, which brings serious technical and ethical challenges.

While debates on this topic continue, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou mentioned reaching out to the Ethereum Foundation to inquire about the network’s consideration of such an intervention during an X Spaces session. Zhou emphasized that the decision should be made according to the community’s wishes. However, the Ethereum developer team and a significant portion of the community believe that such a move would fundamentally undermine decentralization.

Many community members referenced the DAO attack Ethereum faced in 2016. At that time, $60 million worth of ETH was stolen, leading developers to split the network with a hard fork. Ethereum Classic emerged from this fork. However, the intervention in that incident was defined as an “irregular state change” rather than a “rollback.”

Cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin reminded the details of the intervention in the DAO attack in a post on X. During that period, all ETH assets in the compromised DAO smart contract were redirected to a new contract, providing investors with 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens to refund their funds.

Community responses brought attention

Arthur Hayes’ “rollback” call faced widespread criticism for allegedly conflicting with the fundamental philosophy of Ethereum. Community members argued that such a decision would demonstrate that Ethereum’s rules are changeable and would undermine the network’s reliability.

X user @the_weso expressed dissent, stating, “Reverting the chain serves no purpose for ETH. If you can change the rules, what’s the point?” While Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin did not make a direct statement on the matter, considering his past advocacy for decentralization, he is believed to be unsupportive of such an intervention.

Ethereum’s core developers have expressed opposition to any intervention that would compromise decentralization on various platforms.