VeChain clarifies that the 2019 blocklist motion was a one-time, community-approved response.
VeChain has issued a agency clarification denying current allegations made in a report revealed by Bybit’s Lazarus Safety Lab, which claimed that the blockchain features a hidden characteristic permitting funds to be frozen.
In an announcement launched on Thursday, VeChain categorically rejected the claims as “factually incorrect and reputationally damaging.”
VeChain Slams Bybit’s Analysis Lab
Addressing the precise allegations in its current submit on X, the group defined that the one incident resembling such motion occurred in December 2019, when a personal key theft compromised a single VeChain pockets. Following the breach, the VeChain group voted to implement a one-time, community-approved blocklist to stop the liquidation of the stolen belongings.
Validators upgraded their node software program to reject transactions originating from the thief’s wallets and ensured the stolen funds couldn’t be moved or reallocated. The measure, VeChain clarified, was a clear, governance-driven response to a significant safety occasion and never a unilateral fund freeze embedded within the protocol’s supply code.
The corporate additional defined that the technical distinction between “blocking” and “freezing” whereas criticizing the Bybit report for conflating validator-level inclusion insurance policies with hardcoded freezing capabilities.
“We encourage the creator of the report back to conduct a deeper technical evaluation to know the implications of blending up these two mechanisms in a public discussion board.”
VeChain additionally identified that unbiased audits, together with these by NCC Group, Coinspect, and Hacken, have confirmed that VeChainThor’s software program permits validators, via community-approved governance, to reject sure transactions, however to not seize or freeze belongings. The blockchain’s consensus-level checks are designed to help decentralized decision-making fairly than centralized management, VeChain added.
Bybit’s Analysis
Bybit’s Lazarus Safety Lab report, titled “Blockchain Freezing Uncovered: Look at the Influence of Fund Freezing Capability in Blockchain,” claimed that 16 main blockchain networks possess options that permit builders or validators to freeze or prohibit person funds. In response to the report, VeChain was amongst a number of networks, together with Binance-backed BNB Chain, Sui, Aptos, and XinFin’s XDC Community, listed as having hardcoded freezing mechanisms straight embedded of their supply code.
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The examine, which examined 166 blockchain networks utilizing AI-assisted code evaluation and handbook verification, recognized three major classes of freezing mechanisms: hardcoded freezing, configuration-based freezing, and on-chain contract freezing.
The report cited a number of historic examples of fund-freezing occasions, together with Sui freezing $162 million in stolen belongings following the Cetus hack, and BNB Chain deploying hardcoded blacklists to comprise a $570 million bridge exploit. Researchers concluded that whereas such interventions may also help mitigate injury from safety breaches, in addition they increase issues about centralization and censorship. It stated that the existence of fund-freezing capabilities, even when carried out for safety functions, challenges the notion of full decentralization.
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