THORChain refuses to block Bitget-linked addresses despite prior halt

THORChain rejected a formal request to refuse service to addresses associated with Bitget's hack, which cost the exchange more than $380 million. The refusal came four months after THORChain halted trading following its own $10 million hack. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen called the hack highly consistent with known patterns of North Korean hacker organizations. On-chain analysts had spotted connections to wallets used following hacks previously attributed to North Korean hackers. Chen and blockchain security firm SlowMist appealed to THORChain. SlowMist was supporting Bitget with tracing the stolen funds. SlowMist urged THORChain not to use decentralization as a blanket excuse when dealing with known stolen funds. THORChain said it was devastated by Bitget's hack and described itself as decentralized and permissionless. THORChain compared itself with Bitcoin, Ethereum and BNB Chain and asked whether those networks would be expected to halt when stolen funds passed through them. BNB Chain validators halted the chain after a $600 million hack in 2022, preventing the attacker from extracting most of the stolen funds. THORChain said its earlier halt was intended to protect the protocol. THORChain said it had never selectively blacklisted the hacker. THORChain said it does not censor by design. THORChain's analytics page showed that the protocol processed $678 million in the two days after the Bitget hack. The page showed daily volume of $20 million to $60 million in the preceding week. THORChain generated almost $1.2 million in gross system income over those same two days. THORChain swaps were used to move most of the $1.5 billion hacked from ByBit in February last year. That incident was linked to North Korean hackers from the so-called TraderTraitor operation. A similar discussion followed that theft. Former THORChain developer Pluto left the project in response. Volume also spiked immediately following April's $280 million Kelp DAO hack. Investigator Specter pointed this out in a Telegram group. Specter made the North Korean connection in the Bitget case.