Sui validators neutralized malicious activity by using consensus to freeze stolen assets, choosing a targeted approach rather than issuing a chain-wide rollback or hard fork

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Currently, the stolen funds have been blocked thanks to a mechanism called deny_list, which prevents any transaction from addresses associated with the hacker. In practice, the validators of the network reject any operation involving these addresses, making the funds unusable. However, this block is not permanent. There are several options to unlock the funds, each with very different technical, ethical, and political implications. One of the most discussed options is the use of a whitelist, that is, a list of authorized transactions that can bypass security checks. This approach leverages the function `transaction_allow_list_skip_all_checks`, which allows completely ignoring the deny_list. Although the relative proposal on GitHub has been closed, it remains the most likely solution. Another possibility is to perform a hard fork, which means directly modifying the protocol rules and the state of the blockchain. This solution, already adopted by Ethereum after the attack on the DAO in 2016, involves enormous risks: it could split the network and compromise the immutability of the chain. For a young blockchain like Sui, in an already saturated market, it would be a potentially self-destructive gamble.

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