CoinBureau is reporting that stolen funds from Bitget exchange are being deposited into the ironwood pool in ZCash. They claim that 2,700 ZEC coins are being deposited into the pool and the original post was first published by ZachXBT in his Telegram Investigations Group as can be seen in the two links:
CoinBureau:
and
ZachXBT TIG:
The most interesting part of this is to see a private ZEC pool acting the way it was designed for: receiving ZEC and add them into a shielded pool without care if those funds are stolen or not as the pool can't identify that. Analytics companies and track tools can openly follow all the incidents in the Blockchain but can't do anything. They can't froze, blacklist or even censor them and here where comes the part where I remember Gracy Chen.
The Bitget CEO blamed Thorchain for not doing anything when they asked to blacklist addresses connected with the hack. Her intentions was to force the permissionless protocol to use a function that doesn't come with the package and help them blacklist those addresses. I don't know what were her intentions after all, even if the protocol could do that it wouldn't retrieve the funds or freeze them. It's a open, permissionless and decentralized platform.
Now, coming back for what is reported today and following her philosophy, ZCash would be forced to stop those inflows and freeze those stolen funds. Fortunately that doesn't work that way and the shielded pool doesn't care or spot the difference from stolen funds or not. For the pool are just coins being shielded to reinforce the privacy of its owners. This is decentralized ecosystem work as it should.
I am not saying that stealing is good but I approve decentralized protocols working as should and enhancing users privacy.
It's up to the platforms who deal with peoples funds to reinforce their systems, research more about criminals technics and become better in what they do. Blaming people or protocols for their own stupidly is harsh and doesn't bring the coins back. Their users protection fund covered all the stolen funds but that doesn't mean the platform should rest and let it go. They should keep tracking those funds and pursuing the culprits to be held accountable but they should stop harassing other protocols.
Yeah, that's privacy in action baby.