Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and a prominent ether (ETH) holder, has sparked controversy by suggesting that Ethereum should consider rolling back its blockchain to recover $1.4 billion in ETH lost by crypto exchange Bybit due to a recent hack. His remarks have reignited the debate over blockchain immutability, drawing sharp criticism from the Ethereum community.
A Call for Reversal
Hayes took to social media platform X to directly address Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, asking whether he would support a rollback of the blockchain to undo the theft.
“@VitalikButerin will you advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official?” Hayes posted.
Hayes further justified his stance by referencing Ethereum’s controversial 2016 DAO hard fork, which was executed to recover stolen funds after a major exploit.
“My own view as a mega $ETH bag holder is $ETH stopped being money in 2016 after the DAO hack hard fork. If the community wanted to do it again, I would support it because we already voted no on immutability in 2016—why not do it again?” he added.
At the time of publication, Buterin had yet to respond to Hayes’ proposal.
Feasibility and Community Backlash
Some industry figures, including journalist Laura Shin, questioned whether Hayes’ remarks were meant in jest. However, the suggestion raised an important discussion about the practicality and implications of such a move.
“I wish we could roll back for the Bybit hack—I’m not against the idea. But the DAO hack was 15% of ETH with a clean recovery path. Today, a rollback would break bridges, stablecoins, L2s, RWAs, and much more. The ETH ecosystem is just too interconnected now for a clean solution like 2016,” said Gautham Santhosh, co-founder of Polynomial.fi.
Ethereum community members widely rejected the idea, emphasizing that the concept of “rollback” contradicts the principles of decentralization and blockchain immutability.
The Challenge of a Blockchain Rollback
Rolling back a blockchain involves reverting it to a previous state before a specific event—in this case, the hack—effectively erasing malicious transactions and restoring lost funds. However, such an action would require broad consensus from the Ethereum network.
In 2016, Ethereum underwent a contentious hard fork to recover $60 million in stolen funds from The DAO, leading to a split between Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). While the term “rollback” was not used, the event was framed as an “irregular state transition.” This move ignited lasting debates over Ethereum’s commitment to immutability.
A similar scenario unfolded in the Bitcoin community in 2019 when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) briefly considered a rollback following a $40 million hack. The idea, later rebranded as a “re-org,” was quickly abandoned due to opposition from Bitcoin’s mining community, which prioritized decentralization.
On Ethereum, a full rollback is deemed practically impossible due to its account-based system, unlike Bitcoin’s UTXO model. The 2016 fork involved software upgrades and reallocating ETH to new addresses, but today’s complex ecosystem—including DeFi protocols, stablecoins, and bridges—makes such an approach far more disruptive.
The Bybit Hack and Its Aftermath
The Bybit security breach was first highlighted on Friday by on-chain investigator ZachXBT, who identified suspicious outflows exceeding $1.4 billion. The attacker swiftly swapped stolen mETH and stETH for ETH using decentralized exchanges.
ZachXBT later linked the attack to the North Korean Lazarus Group, a well-known cybercrime syndicate. The stolen funds were dispersed across multiple addresses, with 10,000 ETH sent to 39 different wallets and another 10,000 ETH to nine additional addresses, according to Polynomial.fi’s Santhosh.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed the exploit, explaining that the hacker had gained control of a specific ETH cold wallet and drained its contents to an unknown address. Despite the substantial loss, Zhou reassured users that Bybit remains solvent, even if the stolen funds are not recovered.
Conclusion
Hayes’ call for an Ethereum rollback has reignited the debate over blockchain immutability but has been met with strong resistance from the Ethereum community. Given the complexity of Ethereum’s ecosystem today, a rollback seems highly unlikely, reinforcing the industry’s broader stance against reversing blockchain transactions, even in the face of major hacks.
Related: Ether Price Spikes Further on Reports of Bybit Starting to Buy ETH
