Flow abandons blockchain rollback plan: sticking to the "decentralization bottom line" is more important than losing 4 million USD

Flow Chain $3.9 million hacked and abandoned rollback / switched to isolated repair, preserving the immutability principle but severely damaging market confidence
(Background summary: Flow rollback blockchain “nodes are not allowed to initiate new transactions,” price crashes 40%, community criticizes: decentralization is meaningless)
(Additional context: Flow flash crash update » Foundation confirms hacking of $3.9 million, network is being rebooted)

On December 28, the blockchain Flow was targeted by hackers exploiting layer-1 vulnerabilities, resulting in approximately $3.9 million worth of assets being illegally minted and transferred out via cross-chain bridges. In just 48 hours, the development team shifted from planning a full rollback to adopting an “isolation repair” approach, subjecting on-chain governance and technical trust to an extreme stress test.

After the incident, the Flow Foundation proposed resetting the chain to a pre-attack snapshot, effectively a “full rollback,” which would erase all legitimate transactions during that period and pose serious risks to cross-chain bridges and validators. deBridge founder Alex Smirnov posted on X platform criticizing the rollback as “reckless and irresponsible.” He warned that breaking the principle of an immutable ledger could lead to greater losses from double-spending and asset mismatches.

“A rollback is not just a technical button; it’s a bomb detonating the trust structure of finance.”

Smirnov’s firm stance, combined with opposition from multiple cross-chain protocols and validator nodes, quickly turned the rollback plan into a target. The community generally believes that if project teams can easily rewrite history under pressure, then “code is law” will lose its foundation.

Isolated Repair: Precise Surgical Intervention

Under strong resistance and centralized criticism, the Flow team announced today (30th) that they would abandon the rollback and instead implement the “Mainnet 28” upgrade, adopting an “isolation repair” strategy. The approach involves not reorganizing blocks but freezing fewer than 0.1% of compromised accounts, destroying unauthorized minted tokens, and restarting the network in read-only mode. Once security is verified, full functionality will be restored. Unlike the previous unilateral decision by the Foundation, this plan was approved through existing consensus mechanisms, preserving the legitimacy of decentralization and minimizing impact on regular user transactions.

Dapper Labs and most validators support the isolation repair, viewing it as a “balance between maintaining immutability and quick damage control.” However, technical success does not automatically restore trust.

Price Plunge and Ecosystem Pain

The hacker attack and governance turmoil caused FLOW tokens to plummet over 40% within 24 hours, from about $0.17 to $0.10. The total locked value (TVL) across the network shrank from $107 million to approximately $73.8 million. Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb temporarily suspended FLOW deposits and withdrawals, amplifying liquidity panic. Analysts note that although the macro environment in 2025 remains relatively lenient for crypto, on-chain security and governance stability are intrinsic risks, and external friendly policies cannot fully offset them.

Unlike the 2016 The DAO incident, Flow chose not to fork or rewrite history, sticking to the consensus bottom line. However, the market has re-priced the risk based on the new price, implying that future trust recovery will require higher transparency and stricter audits.

Flow’s 48-hour dramatic shift leaves a clear signal for public chain governance: when security incidents occur, sacrificing immutability is no longer an acceptable option. The isolated repair avoided rewriting history, but the $3.9 million loss and halved token price remind the market that maintaining principles is not cost-free. Moving forward, Flow must strengthen long-term technical robustness and openly govern processes to restore “code is law” from the realm of words back to the hearts of users.

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