Arthur Hayes, Samson Mow Push for Ethereum Rollback

In what is considered now the largest hack within the cryptocurrency industry, Bybit’s hot wallet was compromised when trying to complete a legitimate transfer, and roughly $1.5 billion, mostly in ETH, was stolen by being sent to another address.

Aside from the immediate impact on crypto prices, such a notable incident garnered the attention of the community, and now some prominent figures are calling for a rollback of Ethereum’s chain.

Hayes, Mow Say Yes

Arthur Hayes, the former BitMEX CEO who described himself as a “mega ETH bag holder,” suggested the rollback shortly after the attack. He believes ETH stopped being money in 2016 when the Ethereum blockchain went through a hard fork (creating Ethereum Classic) after a $60 million hack against The DAO.

Since it has already been done once, Hayes noted that it could happen again. Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur and CEO of JAN3, Samson Mow, supported Hayes’ stance, indicating that such a rollback will not only return the stolen ETH to Bybit but also help prevent “the North Korean government from using those funds to finance their nuclear weapons program.”

He went further, indicating that a potential rollback could readjust EIP-1559 to correct the deflationary burn mechanism, which has failed to an extent.

While we roll back, this is also an opportunity to adjust EIP-1559 to correct the deflationary burn mechanism. Perhaps with the addition of an oracalized zkflux capacitation layer to optimize the burn.

We can talk more in person at @EthereumDenver. pic.twitter.com/gCc0zhBAa3

— Samson Mow (@Excellion) February 22, 2025

The Risks

Rolling back Ethereum (or another blockchain) might sound simple, but it’s a highly complex technical move that could jeopardize numerous internal processes. To understand the risks, you should know that the rollback process allows the blockchain to revert back to a previous point in time. This means that it will not only return the stolen ETH to Bybit, but it will erase all other non-hack-related transactions and movements on the Ethereum network.

It has been done only a handful of times (like the aforementioned DAO hack) and is even rarely considered because it is highly controversial as it undermines the immutability of the underlying blockchain.

Many other community members highlighted the risks of such a potential move now, indicating that the Ethereum blockchain is a lot more complex now than it was nine years ago. YugaLabs’ VP, going by the X handle Quit, summarized the risks under Hayes’ post.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we were philosophically ok with another rollback:

– how many people that bridged or swapped assets would have their actions undone, for better or for worse?
– how many stablecoins or tokenized RWAs would suddenly be unbacked?
– how many L2s would…

— Quit (@0xQuit) February 22, 2025

As of press time, there has been no official statement by Vitalik Buterin or anyone else from the highest levels of the Ethereum food chain on the matter.