What the actual fuck is even happening to our industry. Satoshi is probably rolling in his grave. Thorchain is doing everything right, and all these web3 toddlers are upset because they clearly don't even understand the first thing about crypto, and just think this is a space to make quick unregulated buck. Web3 is not just about making money, it's about a core philosophy and belief that in the digital era, TRUE ownership should be possible. That's it. Full stop. It started as something sorta cyberpunk, but as our world as evolved into the online one it is today, this is now something i believe everyone should have access too. But no one seems to appreciate what risks that freedom comes with. By all means, do keep your money in a bank, or invested in stocks, if you enjoy the projection that bring you. But do not expect it in web3. You should not be here because "it's like stocks, but with more potential upside" or you WILL get burned 99/100 times. But for me, the mere concept that anyone in this space would ever expect any funds to be frozen, or help to rendered in general, in the case of a scam or exploit is still absolutely mind boggling to me. It's nice when it happens; it can build trust and save projects. But it inherently should not be expected in this space, it's a built-in, omnipotent risk that everyone should account for at all times. It's just that it's a risk we take because we value the benefits of web3 even more. ------- So, about the recent KelpDAO and LayerZero exploit. You know who's "at fault" for the recent KelpDAO exploit? 1. KelpDAO for failing to enhance their LZ setup, and even further, to completely rely on a third party tool like LZ without deeply, intimately understanding it; the least i'd expect for a project handling 100s of millions of dollars.* 2. LayerZero for allowing so many teams to use their setup in the 1:1 config, and to be honest, for having the exploit in that 1:1 DVN config at all.* 3. And finally, in a weird but very real way, as rough as it sounds. It's on everyone that put money into KelpDAO, trusting a less than 5 year old protocol with hundreds of millions of dollars, without inspecting the code themselves.** This is web3, and there are inherent risks that people should understand. Hackers wouldn't have the incentive they do for these thefts if people weren't so willing to ape their funds into every new "opportunity" that emerges with limited due diligence, or if teams put more into security then they do chasing TVL. *No, i am genuinely not trying to bash either team here, we're going to see a lot more exploits like this soon from teams far more seasoned than them, (and not just in web3, i.e. mythos style threats.) Im just saying that objectively, some blame obviously lies there. **No, im not saying i inspect the source code of every dApp i put money into. Not at all. But what i am saying is that i put money in there fully understanding that i didn't inspect it, that it's not FDIC insured or similar, and that any loss incurred is on me. Again, this is the true wild west of the internet and of finance, it's not your easy ticket to a lambo. ------- MEANWHILE There sits Thorchain, following the core philosophy and ethos of web3, just providing the service it promised, no questions asked, full stop. And yet, it's somehow getting hate for it? In the attached image, one commenter says "you see stolen funds getting laundered on your platform and you do nothing." And it truly makes me wonder if he's just like "professor" Jiang that wants to know where the bitcoin servers are. Just because there's a @THORChain twitter account that someone owns, does NOT mean that anyone "owns" ThorCHAIN the blockchain. It's no one persons platform. If you don't think it should be a completely open DeFi exchange with no restrictions, then go buy a fuck load of $RUNE and start talking to some validators, and make it that way through governance. But since that won't be happening, id instead urge you and everyone like these two in the image to take a step back and reconsider what you're actually even asking for here. Even if you did control Thorchain, do you think it would continue to exist if you turned it into a centralized, censorable version of it's current self? Absolutely not, because then it's little different from a CEX. Decentralization is not all upside, and if you were every told that, im sorry you were mislead. It's far from the greatest thing since sliced bread. Decentralization has MASSIVE drawbacks compared to centralized systems in many ways; but we value it for the specific ways in which it provides a better alternative. Hating on Thorchain for operating as designed is just absurd. If not from everything i've listed here, then just for that simple fact. ------ Bottom line, Thorchain was built to do exactly this; let anyone in the world swap any amount of crypto between wallets and chains whenever they want. If you don't like that fact, that's perfectly fine, i certainly wouldn't ever judge you for it, but, it probably means you need to reevaluate if you should even be involved in crypto at all.