NFT public chain Flow experienced an unprecedented security shock at the end of the year. A hacker attack involving 10% of the total supply caused this expanding ecosystem project to fall into trouble.



Here's what happened: the hacker illegally minted approximately 150 million FLOW tokens on the Flow network in one go. The speed was astonishing—these tokens were quickly transferred out, with some flowing to a major exchange and eventually exchanged for BTC for withdrawal. The method was covert, the scale was massive, and the entire ecosystem suffered serious damage.

Flow's official team made a difficult decision: to urgently shut down the entire network. This was initially to stop the bleeding, but the aftereffects followed. The leading NFT lending platform Flowty was forced to suspend settlements due to the network outage, and some users' lending assets faced processing delays.

The most interesting part was the community's subsequent discussion—should they perform a chain rollback? This issue once sparked fierce debates. Some supported rolling back to restore the stolen assets, while others firmly opposed (after all, this would break the immutability feature of blockchain). The Flow Foundation ultimately listened to the opposition, abandoned the rollback plan, and chose a more transparent recovery path: first restore the Cadence mainnet, relaunch the EVM chain within 24 hours, then precisely locate and destroy all illegally minted tokens.

This crisis tested not only technical emergency response capabilities but also the governance maturity of a public chain project.
FLOW-2,88%
BTC1,82%
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AlgoAlchemistvip
· 7h ago
Flow's recent move is really disappointing; minting 150 million tokens in one go—what kind of outrageous vulnerability is this?
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DegenWhisperervip
· 7h ago
That's why I still believe in Bitcoin. No matter how great an ecosystem is, it can't withstand a hacking incident.
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TokenTherapistvip
· 7h ago
Rolling back, to put it simply, is about wavering faith. Flow still sticks to its bottom line.
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SmartMoneyWalletvip
· 7h ago
1.5 billion FLOW tokens just disappeared? On-chain data needs to be thoroughly analyzed; that BTC withdrawal record must be kept clear and detailed. Whether a rollback is performed or not, honestly, Flow is betting on whether its reputation is worth the cost. So far, it seems the bet paid off. Shutting down the network for 24 hours and then restarting—this tactic is quite interesting—other public chains would have freaked out if they faced this. Can illegally minted tokens be precisely destroyed? It always feels like there are still vulnerabilities somewhere. The real test is whether the token price can stay stable; user confidence is much harder to restore than technical fixes. When will the forcibly paused lending positions on Flowty be liquidated? That’s what retail investors are truly concerned about.
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DaoResearchervip
· 7h ago
According to the white paper, Flow's decision to abandon a rollback this time precisely demonstrates what true governance maturity looks like. Although there is some pain involved, it did not undermine the consensus foundation. 150 million tokens. Based on data performance, this is the biggest black swan event in token economics design. The controversy over chain rollback essentially stems from incentive incompatibility issues. I have written analyses on this; if you're interested, we can discuss. Wait, how should the suspension of Flowty's settlement be handled? Isn't the single point of failure risk a design flaw? However, I must say, Flow's emergency response speed is indeed impressive. Restarting the EVM chain within 24 hours is no joke. This incident completely exposes the risk resistance capability of on-chain lending platforms. Quoting Vitalik's view, decentralization does not equal resistance to censorship; it also depends on the maturity of the infrastructure.
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