Academic Proposal to Make Ethereum Transactions Reversible Divides DeFi Community

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.

To read the full story subscribe to The Defiant newsletter.