Bybit Allegedly Hacked by Lazarus Group

On Friday, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was allegedly hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus group, draining nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the exchange.

Following the hack, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and a claimed major ether holder, wrote a post on X to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin questioning if he would advocate for rolling back the chain to assist @Bybit_Official. Meanwhile, in an X spaces session, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou revealed his team reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to explore if such an action was appropriate, emphasizing that decisions should reflect the community’s desires.

Hayes’s post prompted a strong backlash from the Ethereum community, firm in the conviction that rolling back would not occur. Some even questioned whether Hayes was joking. CoinDesk reached out to Hayes for clarification on his comments.

Members of the Ethereum community, including core developer teams, largely oppose rolling back the network as it undermines core decentralization principles. If Buterin unilaterally initiated such a rollback, it would signal the end of Ethereum’s ethos, which relies on numerous developer teams and community members for the blockchain’s health and state.

User @the_weso commented, “Rolling back the chain would give ETH no purpose. What’s the point if you can just change rules?”

Outsiders referenced the 2016 DAO hack, where $60 million in ETH was siphoned. The network successfully implemented a hard fork, splitting into two: the old network continued as Ethereum Classic while the new chain continued on as Ethereum.

Though a hard fork occurred, it was not a rollback; it was termed an irregular state transition. Ethereum’s reliance on an account model means it technically can’t roll back transactions. During the hack, developers upgraded their nodes to new software, enabling the movement of stolen ETH from one Ethereum account to another.

Laura Shin of Unchained explained the irregular state change: “They airlifted all the ETH in the DAO smart contracts out to a refund contract that would send you 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens you sent in.”

Read more: Arthur Hayes Floats the Idea of Rolling Back Ethereum Network to Negate $1.4B Bybit Hack, Drawing Community Ire