The Bitget hack came with a lot of debate around social media specially on X after the exchange CEO public throw this comment on her personal account: "Our attacker addresses are publicly listed and actively tracked. We are formally asking THORChain to refuse service to these addresses. Decentralization is a design principle, not a shield for facilitating known stolen funds.
The industry is watching."
At first glance that comment might be something normal and Thorchain operators could just switch the buttons and accept what she was saying right away. But that isn't simple as she thinks.
Thorchain is a permissionless platform based on decentralized principles with their node operators spread all over the world. In fact , no one knows who they are or where they are located. They have some kind of consensus when it comes to protect their own vaults and keys to use in those cases.
Even so and having those powers to pause operations when an attack happen on their protocol doesn't mean a hacker can't take advantage of it. Imagine that an attack happen when all operators are unaware and need at least 3 node operators to avoid the attack. A slight delay means some vaults will be hacked. It happened recently but they acted fast and avoided major damages.
Now with the hack on Bitget, a complete different platform operating in a centralized manner, the CEO comes out to ask the Thorchain to literally blacklist addresses linked with the hack. The protocol can't do it as their own rules doesn't allow it. That's not about denying or accepting blacklisting addresses but in a permissionless environment that won't happen. Thorchain is based in those principles and node operators can't always stop operations when please them but in extreme cases that means their own house is under attack.
What happened on Bitget was a unfortunate incident but Chen doesn't need to go around and ask other protocols to change the way they act just to please them. Many or that amount not only passed through Thorchain but also other centralized exchanges like Finance, who failed to freeze the funds, and other ones that weren't disclosed until today. Tether and CIRCLE froze some funds as they are praticallly centralized entities and people who use them need to accept it but decentralized exchanges act on their own rules.
I truly don't understand for example this folks from MisTrack as being a security researcher company should know more about this and not come publicly to demand answers to Thorchain or any other permissionless protocols around the industry. This should be clear: devs build protocols and people choose to use them at their own risks.
Centralized exchanges build companies that handle large sums of money on behalf of their customers so their should be responsible for them. If their fail on their job they shouldn't blame others for their mistakes. Imagine if Thorchain accepted what Chen wanted and blacklisted the address, tomorrow a government, entity, competition, etc could come and ask another bullshit and that could destroy the reputation and trust people have on their platform.
This is the case to say out loud: each monkey on it own tree full stop.