Following the hack of the Bitfinex exchange resulting in the theft of around $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum, Arthur Hayes, the founder of BitMEX, asked Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, in a post on social media if he supports restoring the chain to compensate for the damages. This proposal faced strong opposition from the Ethereum community. Core developers and network members emphasized that such action goes against the principles of decentralization and is not feasible. Some doubted the seriousness of Hayes’ proposal. Meanwhile, Ben Zhou, CEO of Bitfinex, stated that his team has discussed this matter with the Ethereum Foundation. However, experts pointed out that chain reversal is not possible in Ethereum’s account-based model. This debate echoes the DAO hack in 2016 when developers opted for a hard fork instead of a rollback, leading to the split into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains.
