Flow’s controversial planned rollback to undo $3.9 million exploit ‘blindsided’ some partners
Flow plans to roll back its blockchain history to reverse a $3.9 million exploit, angering partners who were not consulted.Summary
The Flow blockchain is planning a controversial rollback of its transaction history to undo a $3.9 million exploit that occurred on Friday. This decision has drawn criticism from key ecosystem partners, particularly cross-chain bridge operators like deBridge, whose co-founder Alex Smirnov stated they received no advance warning before the rollback was decided.
Smirnov argued that a rollback punishes innocent users and liquidity providers rather than the attacker, who had already moved the stolen funds. He and LayerZero are advocating for an alternative: a targeted hard fork that fixes the vulnerability and blacklists illicit addresses, similar to how BNB Chain handled a past incident. The lack of coordination also concerned a major centralized exchange that deBridge contacted, which was unaware of the plan.
The Flow Foundation acknowledged extending the coordination window on Sunday morning before the criticism surfaced, citing potential data inconsistencies. The exploit, confirmed on December 27, involved an attacker minting native FLOW and other bridged tokens, causing the FLOW token price to plunge over 40%. The Foundation missed a subsequent update deadline, and exchanges suspended services following the incident.
(Source：The Block)