ThorChain under fire because it won’t blacklist stolen Bitget funds
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A centralized exchange with lax security gets hacked by the North Koreans for $387.5 million, and then somehow shifts the blame game onto a decentralized exchange for not blacklisting the addresses.
The drama began on September 25 when the Asian focused exchange Bitget revealed $351.6 million in “unauthorized transfers” but it later upgraded the tally to $387.5 million. It said a preliminary investigation had linked the IP addressees to VPN services used by a North Korean hacking group.
While that isn’t firm proof, CEO Gracy Chen said its investigators had flagged other similarities with previous thefts.
North Korean hackers were believed to be behind the $1.5 billion Bybit exchange hack, and much of the funds from that attack were then swapped on the decentralized exchange THORChain (which is not a mixer and funds can still be traced after being swapped).
Chen then publicly called on THORChain to block the addresses linked to the attack. “Decentralization is a design principle, not a shield for facilitating known stolen funds,” she thundered. Thorchain politely said no chance, which has set off a massive debate over whether they can or should comply with Chen’s request. Decentralization maxis like Joel Valenzuela said doing so would undermine crypto’s cypherpunk ethos. “If we let decentralized protocols to be bullied into setting a censorship precedent, or make it toxic to interact with permissionless protocols, then we lose to tyranny. Full stop,” he said.
But THORChain isn’t as decentralized as Bitcoin or Ethereum, and it coordinated to quickly pause the chain when it got hacked for $10.7 million in May. “Thorchain is like 5 retards in a discord coordinating secret updates in between talking about the stolen funds they’re profiting from and lying about the admin functionality they abuse regularly to rug their users and NO’s,” said cybersecurity expert Tay Vano.
However THORChain’s ability to blacklist particular addresses is unclear. Back in February 2025 it revealed it had retired the admin key which would give it the power to do so.
All publicity is good publicity and THORChain’s native token RUNE has surged 50% in a week.
Where we’re going we won’t NEED blockchain says Vitalik
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has rallied the troops with an inspiring post outlining how Ethereum is being rebuilt from the ground up to integrate zero knowledge proofs, parallel processing, privacy and post quantum technology to genuinely become “the cryptographic world computer.”
“It’s really not just a blockchain anymore. It’s a hybrid architecture that combines together blockchains and modern cryptography, to enable much more powerful properties,” he wrote, describing “an architecture that combines blockchains with cryptographic privacy and verification, and powerful decentralized off-chain components.” The Hegota fork, which is planned for next year, would likely Ethereum’s last “normal” fork he said.
Source: Brian Armstrong
Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong — a man who rarely utters the word “Ethereum” — reposted an analysis of the blog from a small account named “Cryptographic” said the analysis was “interesting.” Cryptographic summed up the thrust of Buterin’s post by saying it changed the whole meaning of “onchain” and meant Ethereum really was becoming a “world computer.”
“Instead of every part of an app having to execute inside a smart contract you can push a huge amount of complexity elsewhere and still inherit Ethereum’s guarantees.”
Aave founder Stani Kulechov made a similar point, arguing: “There are countless of use-cases where Ethereum verifiability would be useful beyond smart contact execution environment for finance to expand what we can actually do in DeFi while minimizing trust. Quite excited for the potential here.”
Crypto Mom retires, suggests ZK proofs for KYC
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has submitted her formal resignation from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, effective Oct. 2.
Peirce, affectionately known as “Crypto Mom” amid her advocacy of clear, rules-based regulation of the crypto industry, posted a copy of her resignation letter on her X account Friday.
Cointelegraph reported in May that Peirce planned to join the law school of Regent University in Virginia as an associate professor in November.
On her way out the door she criticized excessive KYC data storage, saying that storing IDs online created large numbers of databases vulnerable to hacks without improving enforcement. Instead, she advocated using zero knowledge proofs, which are able to verify eligibility without sending ID documents through. “One can prove that you qualify without that counterparty knowing your name, income, or address,” she said.
Magazine covered this very subject earlier this month.
Open AI called for…
cointelegraph.com