Don’t Call It A Hack: Crypto Reacts To The Binance Smart Chain Exploit And Halt

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Was the Binance Smart Chain hacked? In the following article, you’ll find Changpeng Zhao’s exact words about the incident. Everybody else’s opinions, though, are about the halting of the chain. Most people are unaware of what Bitcoinist told you a year ago: the Binance Smart Chain is centralized and advertised as such. It’s not a secret. It’s that blockchain’s main characteristic.

In any case, this story is fresh. There are still a lot of questions about this afternoon’s event. However, Changpeng Zhao has been open about the whole situation and informed the public through Twitter. Let’s start there and then get to the praise and criticism. Once again, we have to divide this into altcoiners and bitcoiners. It’s the most effective way of presenting the frequently-contrasting opinions.

CZ Explains The Binance Smart Chain Exploit

  • While Binance’s internal communications downplayed the incident calling it “irregular activity” or claiming the chain is “under maintenance,” Changpeng Zhao was open about the Binance Smart Chain exploit. Or, more specifically, “an exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe.”
  • Later on, CZ humble-bragged and gave the Binance Smart Chain team all the credit. “By the time I was woken up at 3AM, the community of validators had already paused. I just did the tweeting. The community & team did all the work.”
  • And even later, the Binance CEO downplayed the incident himself. LOL. “The current impact estimate is around $100m USD equvilent, about a quarter of the last BNB burn,” CZ wrote.

So, there was an exploit but the situation was dealt with. The company recently twitted “Binance Smart Chain is back online. We have now resumed Binance Smart Chain deposits and withdrawals on Binance.” The hit the company took wasn’t as bad as some people thought at the beginning. Was it because they quickly halted the whole Binance Smart Chain? Maybe, but that’s what the criticism that the company received is about. About their power to just stop the chain. 

Well get to that, let’s start with… actually, it’s mostly criticism. 

BNB price chart on FTX | Source: BNB/USD on TradingView.com

Altcoiners React To The Binance Smart Chain Exploit

  • Cake DeFi’s Julian Hosp was CZ’s only knight in shining armor. The man went to bat for the Binance Smart Chain and took the opportunity to criticize bitcoin in the process. “Critics will focus on how BSC is centralized around CZ. Want full decentralization?! Buy bitcoin. Hodl it. Nothing else you can do with it. Want to actually use dapps?! Use other blockchains.”
  • Into The Cryptoverse’s Benjamin Cowen went with a one-liner and criticized Solana in the process. “Call me crazy but I prefer chains that don’t get paused,” he wrote.
  • Using the same idea, a pseudonymous Twitter user created a meme using the classic The Ballad of Buster Scruggs-inspired template.
  • Up Only’s Cobie reminded us of a classic and very well-produced video.

Bitcoiners Take It Way To Seriously

  • Security expert Jameson Lopp made fun of the Binance Smart Chain’s variety of validators. They’re all Changpeng Zhao, get it?
  • Nunchuk’s Hugo Nguyen denounced the Binance Smart Chain’s centralization. “Absolute decentralization theatre. Decentralization and networkwide on-demand shutdown literally cannot be more polar opposites of each other,” he wrote. And Hugo is 100% right. However, the Binance Smart Chain is not decentralized at all. It’s known.
  • Luxor’s NickH pointed out a possible side-effect that would affect another beloved blockchain. “The coins already swapped to $ETH Now we’ll find out how decentralized Ethereum really is after the merge,” he initially pointed out. However, later on, he got the official numbers and retired his bet. “The attackers only got 10-15% out before things started getting frozen so in my opinion low chance of a rollback.”

And that’s what the Twitterati wrote about the Binance Smart Chain halt.

Featured Image by Omar Medina from Pixabay | Charts by TradingView

CBDCs, a bank vault


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