{"id":18587,"date":"2025-12-24T08:15:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T08:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/gnosis-chain-activates-hard-fork-to-recover-9-4m-frozen-during-balancer-exploit\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T08:16:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T08:16:49","slug":"gnosis-chain-activates-hard-fork-to-recover-9-4m-frozen-during-balancer-exploit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/gnosis-chain-activates-hard-fork-to-recover-9-4m-frozen-during-balancer-exploit\/","title":{"rendered":"Gnosis Chain activates hard fork to recover $9.4M frozen during Balancer exploit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-detail__content blocks\">\n<p class=\"is-style-lead\">Gnosis Chain, which plays a key infrastructural role in Balancer\u2019s ecosystem, has executed a hard fork to recover a portion of funds that were frozen during the $116 million early November exploit of the protocol.<\/p>\n<div id=\"cn-block-summary-block_78205f247ac022545c087becf7eaf90b\" class=\"cn-block-summary\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__nav tabs\">\n        <span class=\"tabs__item is-selected\">Summary<\/span>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Gnosis Chain activated a hard fork on Dec. 22 to recover $9.4 million frozen after the Balancer exploit.<\/li>\n<li>All node operators have been urged to immediately upgrade their clients to avoid penalties.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-summary --><\/p>\n<p>According to an official announcement, the hard fork was activated on Dec. 22 following months of debate over immutability and governance intervention, with the community still divided over the precedent it sets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe funds are now out of the hacker\u2019s control,\u201d the announcement <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/gnosischain\/status\/2003410653185474630?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Node operators have been urged to upgrade their clients to avoid penalties.<\/p>\n<p>The idea was first proposed by Philippe Schommers, Gnosis\u2019s head of infrastructure, who argued that the network would need to undergo a hard fork to be able to recover the funds that were frozen right after the exploit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe believe that in due course, validators should not be able to censor transactions and the underlying network infrastructure should be actually blind. We commit to work towards this future, but in the meantime encourage a community discussion on how and when the community should wield this power it still has when acting in concert,\u201d Schommers said in a Dec. 12 forum post.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why did Gnosis Chain propose a hard fork?<\/h1>\n<p>After Balancer was exploited and the bad actors managed to drain roughly $128 million to a series of wallets spanning multiple chains. As an immediate containment measure, Gnosis validators implemented an emergency soft fork that effectively blacklisted the hacker\u2019s address, but also left the assets in a frozen state, inaccessible to both the attacker and victims.<\/p>\n<p>To be able to return the funds, the hard fork was the only technical route that would allow the network to rewrite its recent history and forcibly move the frozen funds from the hacker\u2019s wallet to a recovery address controlled by the Gnosis DAO.<\/p>\n<p>For this to succeed, all node operators were required to upgrade their clients immediately to follow the new chain.<\/p>\n<p>While some community members have <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.gnosis.io\/t\/balancer-hack-hard-fork\/11884\/7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">dubbed<\/a> the move a rescue mission, others argue that by altering the chain state, Gnosis has compromised the foundational principle of blockchain immutability.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore we can move forward with the hard fork, it\u2019s vital to define the process surrounding it so that all similar cases can be handled, and not just those that benefit one party or another,\u201d one community member, going by MichaelRealT wrote.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cValidators are key players whose role is to enforce a set of rules and preserve the chain\u2019s integrity. Accepting the hard fork could set a dangerous precedent, opening a Pandora\u2019s box and bringing the Gnosis Chain closer to traditional finance,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe greatest issue is the precedence \u2013 if immutability is not a thing, then what prevents the DAO to overwrite Blochchain state more frequently in the future?,\u201d another community member, going by TheVoidFreak, questioned.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Recovery efforts<\/h2>\n<p>Since the exploit, a number of coordinated recovery efforts have been implemented to claw back funds across affected networks.<\/p>\n<p>As previously reported by crypto.news, liquid staking protocol StakeWise successfully managed to recover approximately $19 million in osETH, while Berachain recovered $12.8 million after coordinating with a white hat hacker.<\/p>\n<p>In late November, Balancer proposed a plan that outlined a reimbursement strategy to return approximately $8 million in recovered assets to impacted liquidity providers, pending further community approval.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gnosis Chain, which plays a key infrastructural role in Balancer\u2019s ecosystem, has executed a hard fork to recover a portion of funds that were frozen during the $116 million early&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18588,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18587\/revisions\/18588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}