Flow once became a star public chain due to the popularity of NBA Top Shot, but the repeated decision-making in this security incident exposed the practical difficulties of Layer1 transitioning to DeFi.

The crisis erupted last Saturday. A vulnerability in Flow's execution layer was exploited by hackers, and $3.9 million worth of assets were transferred out in one go. The shockwave of the news directly impacted the market—FLOW dropped from $0.173 to $0.079, halving instantly. Market panic spread.

The foundation's initial response was the conventional emergency plan: isolating the network and rolling back the chain state to block height 137,363,395, which was the checkpoint before the attack. This meant all transaction records within the following 6 hours were erased, and user transactions failed and needed to be resubmitted. The foundation claimed this was the "safest path."

However, the problem was that this judgment overlooked the complexity of the ecosystem. The hacker's funds had already been transferred out via cross-chain bridges, so a rollback would not harm the attacker but would instead punish innocent users—legitimate transactions would be wiped out, and ecosystem confidence would be severely damaged. The contradiction was evident.

The turning point came on December 29. Flow's official team urgently changed their stance, abandoning the rollback plan and switching to an "isolation recovery mechanism." This was not just a technical adjustment but more like a power struggle within the ecosystem—balancing the interests of DeFi protocols, users, and the foundation ultimately led to a new choice.