Adam Back Critiques EVM After Bybit Hack

Adam Back, a prominent cypherpunk and CEO of Blockstream, recently addressed the Bybit hack on his X account, where the exchange lost an astonishing $1.4 billion in Ethereum.

EVM Complexity Blamed for the Hack

Back pointed out that the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) played a crucial role in the hack’s success. He suggested that the inherent complexity of the EVM and Ethereum transactions facilitated the hackers in draining Bybit’s entire Ethereum cold wallet.

Back specifically criticized hardware wallets (HWW), mentioning Ledger as an example, stating: “HWW are far too low power to interpret and contain the information to verify EVM over-complex scripts and state.”

He provided insight into the situation, describing that during an attempt to transfer $100 million in Ethereum from a cold wallet to a hot wallet, a blind signing mechanism was exploited. This allowed hackers to manipulate the Ethereum smart contract and steal the entire $1.4 billion in ETH.

> “apparently not, multisig complex program: it replaced the smart-contract, so the entire cold wallet was stolen. ByBit were trying to send $100m from cold wallet to hot wallet, but instead the blind-signing… resulted in theft of the whole $1.4bil cold wallet.”
> — Adam Back (@adam3us) February 24, 2025

Further commenting on the incident, Back stated that “Bitcoin’s dominance ratches higher” and criticized Ethereum and the EVM as “complex, fragile, blind-signed, un-securable.”

Bybit’s Response to the Hack

The exploit occurred on Friday and is believed to be connected to the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. Some Bitcoin maximalists ironically suggested a rollback of the Ethereum chain to recover the lost funds, similar to the 2016 DAO hack recovery that led to the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Nonetheless, the Ethereum team maintained that the transaction draining the wallet was legitimate by Ethereum’s standards. As of now, Bybit CEO has confirmed that the exchange has successfully closed the liquidity gap in ETH.