Adam Back, a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency world and creator of Hashcash, has pointed fingers at the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) architecture as the underlying cause of the recent massive hack on the Bybit exchange. Back argues that fundamental design flaws within the EVM, which underpins the Ethereum blockchain and many other networks, created vulnerabilities that were exploited in the Bybit incident.
Adam Back argues that the ongoing criticism of EVM hacks, particularly the recent $1.4 billion Bybit breach, is missing the real issue. While some believe EVM failures are insignificant, Back emphasizes that such incidents damage the broader crypto ecosystem’s credibility, including Bitcoin’s reputation.
this meme is a F FANTASTIC illustration of the EVM mis-design root cause of the @Bybit_Official ETH wallet hack and half a dozen other blind-sign rooted hacks going back. picture says 1000 words! @high_byte well done ser
— Adam Back (@adam3us) February 24, 2025
Back has been vocal about what he sees as the fundamental flaws of EVM technology. On February 22, he described EVM-based smart contracts as “complex, fragile, and unsecurable,” highlighting the frequent high-value hacks in the Ethereum ecosystem. He pointed out that the Bybit incident was not caused by hardware wallet security issues but rather the difficulty of accurately verifying transactions due to EVM’s complexity.
EVM contracts are too complicated and resource intensive to be properly verified or the effect displayed on a hardware wallet. (unlike #bitcoin) so what happend with @Bybit_Official is they thought they were doing a 30,000 ETH withdraw, signed on @ledger HWW; but instead they
— Adam Back (@adam3us) February 23, 2025
One of his main critiques is that hardware wallets are designed to display transaction details for user verification, but due to EVM’s technical structure, this doesn’t function properly for Ethereum. As a result, Bybit’s hardware wallet reportedly failed to display recipient addresses for ETH transactions.
