Academic Proposal to Make Ethereum Transactions Reversible Divides DeFi Community

Critics Call Idea ‘Plain Stupidity’ But Supporters Embrace It As Defense Against Hacks

Researchers at Stanford University have designed variations of Ethereum’s popular ERC-20 and ERC-721 token standards to enable reversible transactions. But the Ethereum community is largely panning the work.

Reversibility — the ability to redo transactions on blockchains — has long been a challenging project for crypto scientists.The Stanford team believe it may hold the key to making cryptocurrencies more protected from hackers. Chainalysis, the blockchain forensics firm, estimates that hackers stole $14B in crypto hacks during 2021.

Yet to make this proposition work, technologists would have to tinker with one of the most sacred properties in cryptocurrency systems: immutability. 

Many in the crypto community vehemently opposed allowing transactions to be reversed in any circumstances.

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