Following the Bybit hack attack, the Ethereum community strongly reacted to some sectors calling for a network rollback. The proposal, criticized for violating the fundamental principles of decentralization, has sparked a major debate from technical and ethical perspectives.

The Bybit hack incident that sparked debates in the cryptocurrency market caused a deep division 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 actors raised the idea of reverting the network. However, the Ethereum community and core developer teams strongly opposed this proposal.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and a known major Ethereum holder, addressed Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, on social media platform X, asking whether he supported or opposed reversing the chain. Hayes’ post received strong reactions from community members advocating for the decentralized nature of Ethereum. Users emphasized that such a step would contradict the fundamental principles of the network.

Ethereum network’s structure and the rollback debate

Technically, the Ethereum network cannot be reversed because the system has a structure that stores users’ ETH assets based on an account model. Therefore, a protocol change is required to return the stolen funds, which would bring along serious technical and ethical issues.

While discussions on this topic continue, Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, stated in an X Spaces session that he contacted the Ethereum Foundation to evaluate whether the network would consider such intervention. Zhou emphasized that the decision should be made based on the community’s desire. However, Ethereum’s developer team and a majority of the community believe that such a step would fundamentally undermine decentralization.

Many community members cited the DAO attack in 2016 as an example. At that time, $60 million worth of ETH was stolen, and developers split the network through a hard fork. Ethereum Classic emerged as a result of this fork. However, the intervention in that case was described not as a “revert” but as an “irregular state change.”

Crypto journalist Laura Shin reminded of the details of the intervention in the DAO attack in a post on X. At that time, all ETH assets in the attacked DAO smart contract were redirected to a new contract, and investors were refunded by giving 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens they held.

Reactions from the community drew attention

Arthur Hayes’s “revert” call faced widespread criticism for not aligning with Ethereum’s fundamental philosophy. Community members argued that such a decision would show that Ethereum’s rules could be changed and would damage the network’s reliability.

X user @the_weso expressed criticism by stating, “Reverting the chain serves no purpose for ETH. What’s the point of being able to change the rules?” The fact that Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin did not make a direct statement on the issue raises questions, but considering his past stance advocating for decentralization, it is believed that he does not favor such intervention.

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