Arthur Hayes, Samson Mow Push for Ethereum Rollback

In what is taken into account now the most important hack inside the cryptocurrency trade, Bybit’s scorching pockets was compromised when attempting to finish a reliable switch, and roughly $1.5 billion, principally in ETH, was stolen by being despatched to a different tackle.

Other than the immediate impact on crypto costs, such a notable incident garnered the eye of the group, and now some outstanding figures are calling for a rollback of Ethereum’s chain.

Hayes, Mow Say Sure

Arthur Hayes, the previous BitMEX CEO who described himself as a “mega ETH bag holder,” urged the rollback shortly after the attack. He believes ETH stopped being cash in 2016 when the Ethereum blockchain went via a tough fork (creating Ethereum Traditional) after a $60 million hack in opposition to The DAO.

Because it has already been performed as soon as, Hayes noted that it may occur once more. Chinese language-Canadian entrepreneur and CEO of JAN3, Samson Mow, supported Hayes’ stance, indicating that such a rollback won’t solely return the stolen ETH to Bybit but additionally assist stop “the North Korean authorities from utilizing these funds to finance their nuclear weapons program.”

He went additional, indicating {that a} potential rollback may readjust EIP-1559 to appropriate the deflationary burn mechanism, which has did not an extent.

Whereas we roll again, that is additionally a possibility to regulate EIP-1559 to appropriate the deflationary burn mechanism. Maybe with the addition of an oracalized zkflux capacitation layer to optimize the burn.

We are able to discuss extra in particular person at @EthereumDenver. pic.twitter.com/gCc0zhBAa3

— Samson Mow (@Excellion) February 22, 2025

The Dangers

Rolling again Ethereum (or one other blockchain) may sound easy, however it’s a extremely complicated technical transfer that would jeopardize quite a few inner processes. To grasp the dangers, you must know that the rollback course of permits the blockchain to revert again to a earlier time limit. Which means that it won’t solely return the stolen ETH to Bybit, however it’s going to erase all different non-hack-related transactions and actions on the Ethereum community.

It has been performed solely a handful of occasions (just like the aforementioned DAO hack) and is even hardly ever thought-about as a result of it’s extremely controversial because it undermines the immutability of the underlying blockchain.

Many different group members highlighted the dangers of such a possible transfer now, indicating that the Ethereum blockchain is much more complicated now than it was 9 years in the past. YugaLabs’ VP, going by the X deal with Stop, summarized the dangers beneath Hayes’ submit.

Let’s faux for a second that we have been philosophically comfortable with one other rollback:

– how many individuals that bridged or swapped property would have their actions undone, for higher or for worse?
– what number of stablecoins or tokenized RWAs would all of a sudden be unbacked?
– what number of L2s would…

— Stop (@0xQuit) February 22, 2025

As of press time, there was no official assertion by Vitalik Buterin or anybody else from the best ranges of the Ethereum meals chain on the matter.