# Balancer hack: hard fork

Source: https://forum.gnosis.io/t/balancer-hack-hard-fork/11884
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Balancer-hack-hard-fork?index=0x693cc7defb2a6d2f8db6f4a2a8fdbeece21ac89e8536e8383729823e67ddcc737fda686e
Submitted by misha on 2025-12-13 UTC, 1 upvote, 1 comment

## Summary

Gnosis Chain contributors, validators and stakeholders are preparing a hard fork intended to create a technical path for the potential return of stolen funds after the Balancer exploit affecting Balancer-managed contracts on Gnosis Chain. Node operators have 10 days to update to the new releases, and the fork is set to activate at 16:11:40 UTC on December 22nd, with nodes not following the majority-stake chain facing penalties. The team says it is focused on enabling funds to be recovered by Christmas, and it has delayed the Fusaka hard fork, now planned to execute on Chiado before Christmas and on mainnet in the new year.

## Article

Balancer hack: hard fork

At the start of November the majority of Gnosis validators adopted a soft fork in response to the Balancer exploit affecting Balancer‑managed contracts on Gnosis Chain.

Since then contributors, validators and other stakeholders have been working on a hard fork intended to create a technical path for the potential return of stolen funds. Gnosis Chain rules are baked into the code the validators run. The last step is the crucial one: a majority of validators must adopt the new binaries in order for the hard fork to succeed…

The releases are now available and node operators have 10 days to update in order to remain in sync as determined by validator consensus. The hard fork is set to activate at 16:11:40 UTC on December 22nd. Nodes that do not follow the chain with a majority of stake will get penalized.

The execution client versions to run are the following:

Geth: v1.16.7-gc.9

Reth: v1.0.0 (requires a full database resync)

Nethermind: v1.35.8

Erigon: v3.3.2

The consensus layer client versinos to run are the following:

Nimbus: v25.11.1

Lighthouse: v8.0.1

Teku: v25.11.1

Lodestar: v1.37.0

There is still a live community discussion around how people will be able to claim back their funds, as well as how contributors involved in the rescue mission may be recognized or compensated. Right now we’re focused on enabling funds to be recovered by Christmas. Once they sit safely in a DAO controlled wallet we will figure out everything else.

We’ve also begun coordinating with all of the involved stakeholders on a technical post-mortem that we’ll share ASAP. It should make for interesting reading.

Finally, this whole process has delayed the Fusaka hard fork. The updated timeline is to execute on Chiado before Christmas and then schedule it for mainnet in the new year.

We believe that in due course, validators should not be able to censor transactions and the underlying network infrastructure should be actually blind. We commit to work towards this future, but in the meantime encourage a community discussion on how and when the community should wield this power it still has when acting in concert. look forward to continued discussions about how Gnosis Chain can maintain credible neutrality, while also clearly defining how / when action should be taken while still technically feasible.

In the meantime, we want to thank everyone whose work has made it possible to right a wrong and recover funds even while the path was not always clear or comfortable. We are very grateful to you all, with a particular mention of the client teams who worked tirelessly to enable this and the validators who are ultimately tasked with some of our most challenging decisions.

As always, please let us know your thoughts.

## Comments

**misha**: > The releases are now available and node operators have 10 days to update in order to remain in sync as determined by validator consensus. The hard fork is set to activate at 16:11:40 UTC on December 22nd. Nodes that do not follow the chain with a majority of stake will get penalized.