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Tim Beiko, the core developer of ethernet, released a long article on February 22, 2025 explaining why ethernet can’t & ldquo; rollback & rdquo; to reverse hacker attacks, such as the recent Bybit hacking. He provides background to the historical events of Bitcoin and TheDAO and discusses why rollback is not feasible in today’s Ethernet Fong ecosystem. GuShiio.com compiles the original text and the corresponding comments as follows:
After Bybit was attacked by hackers yesterday, some people asked again why Ethernet Fong could not & ldquo; rollback & rdquo; block chain to reverse the hacker attack.
Although experienced people in the ecosystem almost agree that this is not feasible, it is worth explaining why this seemingly reasonable proposal is not technically feasible, especially for those who do not know much about it. If you are one of them, this is a simple explanation of why this is impossible.
First, take a look at the background of the rollback:
The concept of blockchain & ldquo; rollback & rdquo; stems from an early event in the Bitcoin blockchain. In 2010, less than two years after Bitcoin was launched, a flaw in client software led to the generation of 184 billion (yes, billion) Bitcoins in Block 74638.
To fix this problem, Satoshi released software patches for bitcoin clients to invalidate these transactions. This is actually & ldquo; rollback & rdquo; the chain that continues to block out during this period to block 74637. In less than a day, the new chain accumulated enough power to prove that it became the main chain, and all rolled-back user transactions were included in the new chain. Note that at that time, Bitcoin was 10 billion times less difficult to mine than it is today, and the price of BTCUSD was about $0.07.
In short, this situation is unique because there is a clear protocol loophole that leads to problematic transactions that are easy to identify because of their large number. In addition, the limited adoption of Bitcoin at the time made it easy to distribute new client versions and quickly mine new segments.
Ethernet Square and TheDAO:
There was a seemingly similar crisis in the early history of Tai Fong, which often led to confusion about the usefulness of rollback. In 2016, TheDAO, a popular ethernet app, controlled about 15% of all ETH at that time. Unfortunately, hackers found a flaw in the application code that allowed them to steal all these funds. This is obviously different from the case of Bitcoin, because the Ethernet Fong protocol itself is working properly, and there is something wrong with the application built on Ethernet Square.
Fortunately, TheDAO developers have implemented a security measure that requires an one-month freeze before withdrawing money from the app. This provides a unique opportunity to address vulnerabilities: you can change the application code to prevent money from eventually flowing to hackers.
Since the application itself cannot do this, the etheric Fong protocol developer must make changes directly in the blockchain history. This is called & ldquo; abnormal state change & rdquo;, because the applied & ldquo; state & rdquo; is changed by manually updating the database rather than through a valid ethersquare transaction.
A rough comparison with the above Bitcoin vulnerability is equivalent to setting the address balance that receives 184 billion BTC to 0, rather than remining the chain that excludes these transactions.
The upgrade caused controversy, and the Etay Fong community was actually divided. Some miners refused to run software patches and continued to dig mines on the chain where the hacking occurred, which is now known as the Etay Fong Classic. The chain we call Etay Square today is the chain that implemented this software upgrade.
Again, this situation is unique. TheDAO’s hacked funds were effectively frozen for a month to give the community time coordination software upgrades. The freezing of funds has another major advantage: did the hacker attack ldquo; spread & rdquo;. If hackers can move funds at will, & ldquo; freeze & rdquo; funds will be an endless cat-and-mouse game because the agreement is open source and any potential changes that may freeze funds must be made public to hackers, giving them enough time to move the money elsewhere.
This leads to the Bybit event.
Why can’t we go back to Tai Tai Fong?
Earlier this week, 401346 ETH (about $1.4 billion) was stolen from the Bybit exchange. The theft was caused by the misleading transaction signed by the custodian of the fund through a damaged multi-signature interface.
The root cause of this hacker attack is a higher level than TheDAO and Bitcoin overflow vulnerabilities. Whether it is the Ethernet Fong agreement or the underlying multi-signature application used by Bybit, there is no problem. It’s a damaged interface that makes the transaction seem to be doing one thing, but actually doing another.
From the point of view of the Taifang agreement, nothing can distinguish the transaction from other legitimate transactions on the Internet. Where there is no violation of the rules of the agreement, the hacked funds can be isolated by fixing the problem like a Bitcoin loophole.
In addition, the money is immediately available to hackers. Unlike in the case of TheDAO, where the community has a month to deploy intervention, hackers immediately start moving money up the chain.
Even if we can solve the above cat-and-mouse game, the Tai Tai Fong ecosystem is very different today from 2016. DeFi and cross-link bridges with other chains mean that any stolen money can be easily mixed in the application network. For example, stolen money can be exchanged on a decentralized exchange, and the resulting tokens can be used as collateral in the DeFi agreement, and borrowed assets can be bridged to completely different chains.
This high degree of interconnection means that any abnormal state change, even if socially acceptable, will have an almost unmanageable chain reaction. Full & ldquo; rollback & rdquo;, even if the most recent chain history part is invalid, it will be worse. Any settled transaction, many of which have effects outside Ethernet Fong (such as exchange sales, RWA redemptions, etc.), will be cancelled, but cannot be undone under the chain.
Therefore, the conclusion is that while Bitcoin could & ldquo; rollback & rdquo; its blockchain 15 years ago, today, the interconnected nature of Ethernet Fong and the settlement of economic transactions on and off the chain make this not feasible today.
Technically speaking, abnormal state changes may still be made at Ethernet Fong when funds are frozen and quarantined. The last time such a change was proposed was in 2018, when about 500000 ETH was frozen in response to a loophole in Parity’s multi-signature wallet (see EIP-999), but there was strong community opposition because of the controversy over the TheDAO incident.
Comment: it is possible to carry out social hard bifurcation at this stage? Return Lazarus funds to zero (because they are easy to track) and make abnormal status changes to send funds back to the Bybit address?
Reply: technically impossible. What if we announce a hard bifurcation and they transfer the money to another address in a block before it takes effect? If hackers move money before bifurcations, bifurcations will not help. In addition, hackers can freeze the entire network through malicious interactions, such as sending a small amount of money to all addresses, similar to a denial of service (DoS) attack.
Comment: if the TheDAO hacking incident happens now (funds are frozen for one month, community coordination may be possible), do you think the governance of Ethernet Fong will accept the abnormal state change again? Or has the agreement culture completely shifted to strict invariance, even in extreme cases?
Reply: it’s hard to say! TheDAO owns about 15 per cent of all ETH (30 times the current Bybit hacking), but the results are more controversial than expected. I think this is a big reason why the Parity hacking incident (about 500000 ETH, where funds are frozen, so recoverable) has never been fixed by hard bifurcations. To provide some perspective, TheDAO has a pledge ETH that is roughly equivalent to the value of all today’s WETH plus all L2 guarantees (not just ETH on L2, but all L2 tokens). That was the scale of an intervention, when the ecosystem was far less mature than it is now.
Comment: the same logic can be applied to more central chains, such as Solana, right? So, for hackers, both Solana and Ethernet Square are enough to be decentralized?
Reply: that’s right. Solana may implement hard bifurcations faster than Ethernet Fong, but you still have many secondary effects and the risk that an attacker will move money before the hard bifurcations take effect.
Comment: if wETH is attacked, will you roll back?
Reply: I don’t have a choice, but I think this is at least the smallest scale to raise this topic. More of my point is that comments about DAO often make it look like & ldquo; is just an application & rdquo;, rather than WETH and all L2 layer funds are frozen in an easy-to-recover way. (that is, the key point is the size of the capital and whether it is easy to recover)
