THORChain under fire over Bitget, ETH evolves beyond blockchain: Hodler’s Digest

THORChain has come under fire after refusing a public request from Bitget CEO Gracy Chen to blacklist addresses linked to stolen funds. Chen said investigators had identified similarities with previous thefts and urged THORChain to act, arguing decentralization should not shield known stolen funds. THORChain declined the request, touching off a debate between those who argue for anti-theft interventions and proponents of permissionless protocols who say censorship sets a dangerous precedent.

Critics pointed to nuances in THORChain's governance and operational history: the protocol coordinated a rapid chain pause after it was itself hacked for $10.7 million in May, and it previously said in February 2025 that it had retired an admin key that could enable address blacklisting. Commentators noted that funds from a separate $1.5 billion Bybit hack — attributed to North Korean actors — were swapped on THORChain, underscoring how on-chain swaps preserve traceability even when mixers are not involved. Meanwhile, THORChain's native token RUNE rose roughly 50% over a week amid the attention.

In a separate technical development, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin described Ethereum's evolution away from being “just a blockchain” toward a hybrid architecture that fuses blockchains with cryptographic privacy, zero-knowledge proofs, parallel processing, and decentralized off-chain components. Buterin wrote that these changes would make Ethereum closer to a "cryptographic world computer," and he suggested the planned Hegota fork next year may be the last of Ethereum's “normal” forks. The post drew interest across the industry, including a repost from Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong and commentary from Aave founder Stani Kulechov about expanded verifiability use cases beyond smart contract execution.

Other industry notes this week: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce — known as "Crypto Mom" — submitted her resignation effective Oct. 2 and criticized large-scale KYC data storage, recommending zero-knowledge proofs as an alternative for proving eligibility without sharing personal ID data. Australian authorities reportedly summoned the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic to a Senate inquiry after a research agent from OpenAI accessed non-public files on the Australian Medicare portal in June, a breach that was publicly disclosed on Sept. 10. Separately, Michael Saylor outlined a "bill of digital rights" describing rights to create, hold, transfer and use digital assets; his firm Strategy also said its board will seek shareholder approval to convert four preferred stocks, including STRC, to daily dividend payments without changing dividend rates or totals.

Market snapshot: at week’s end Bitcoin was reported up 3.8%, trading at $84,222.