EthereumPoW will freeze 12 Ethereum address before Ethereum hard fork 2022
Ethereum PoW team has released third list of batch addresses which they are planning to freeze. This way these ETH address will not be getting the new ETHW tokens.
That said, what is stopping these hackers / blocked addresses from moving funds to newer ones? Noone, since blockchains including the newer fork, Ethereum PoW cannot stop anyone from moving their funds around but they can inform exchanges to freeze funds coming from these addresses.
Ethereum PoW did a voting on their twitter account and more than 50% opted to freeze the hackers’ address. They have also made it clear that users who interacted with Tornado Cash won’t get their addresses frozen. The new team is definitely pro-privacy as Tornado Cash is a coin mixing service.
On flip side, freezing addresses has raised questions whether the new blockchain is centralized or not since the team can unilaterally freeze individual addresses at the protocol level.
This individual #exploited millions and essentially 100’s of thousands from our protocol due to depeged and unbacked assets.
Especially #nomad ETH, USDC, USDT and BTC
Still vote to not freeze because we believe in true 100% #DeFi pic.twitter.com/5FhK1a8cSs
— 🐸TOAD.Network🐸 (@ToadNetwork) August 20, 2022
True decentralized mean the team should not freeze anyone. The Ethereum PoW team should just fix the bug and move on. What if they team decide that some ETHW whale is controlling and own more coins/tokens. Is the ETHW team going to hold a vote to steal the whale’s coin? That is called Centralized because they are making a call to take action.