Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Linea has come beneath fireplace after revealing that Velocore, a decentralized alternate operating on its community, had been hacked, resulting in it unilaterally halting block manufacturing.
Over the weekend, the Velocore hack resulted in 700 ETH (over $2.6 million) being moved off the Layer 2 community through an unnamed third-party bridge. On the time of writing, a complete of $6.8 million has been misplaced from Volocore. Linea explains that after being unable to contact the DEX group, they rapidly “shut down the sequencer to stop any extra funds from being exfiltrated.”
He added:
“The sequencer was suspended from blocks 5081800 and 5081801. Throughout this suspension, we gave the Velocore group time to help their vulnerability triage efforts. We additionally censored the hacker's tackle. This has considerably lowered the ecosystem influence for Linea customers.”
Linea justified its determination by declaring that the hackers had “begun promoting massive quantities of tokens into ETH, which moreover the exploit drying up the liquidity pool would have triggered different points within the ecosystem for customers.”
The neighborhood condemns Linea
The crypto neighborhood has strongly criticized Linea's determination to cease block manufacturing, arguing that it violates the ethics of the rising business.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Labs and a vocal Solana supporter, acknowledged the rationale behind the transfer however expressed concern about its long-term influence.
“ConsenSys L2 unilaterally took down the chain yesterday, which is affordable given the circumstances, but in addition a transparent signal that this isn’t crypto.”
Echoing this sentiment, Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski emphasised that decentralization is essential for all sequencers, and he referred to as for all Layer 2 options to prioritize integrating decentralization into their platforms.
“Decentralizing the sequencer is just not an possibility. Each severe L2 stack has to race to be the primary to do that,” Gluchowski stated.
Decentralization Targets
In the meantime, Linea stated it should proceed to work on decentralizing its community and sequencers to stop a recurrence of this incident.
“Linea’s purpose is to decentralize the community, together with the sequencer. As soon as the community is decentralized and matures right into a censorship-resistant setting, Linea’s group will not be capable to cease block manufacturing or censor addresses. That is the first purpose of our community.”
The ConsenSys-backed blockchain famous that the majority competing networks nonetheless depend on centralized technical operations to guard ecosystem contributors, however added that its “core worth stays a permissionless and censorship-resistant setting.”
