Edit: Assuming the underlying ICO transaction happened in Bitcoin or similar. If the funds were wired in say, USD, it would not be able to be rolled back after 3 days or so.
No -- well, kinda. This is unintentionally hilarious because, of course, Ethereum has done just that once before. By creating a new network that picked up from just before the "fradulent" activity.
The part that might be confusing to some folks is that in order to operate a truly trustless and decentralized cryptocoin ecosystem, we have no way of distinguishing between "fraudulent transactions" and legitimate ones. They're all legitimate otherwise they'd have been rejected by the network.
I thought they just created a new transaction that moved all the stolen funds to a new smart contract?
That's why, from what I remember, when etheruem was hardforked created a transaction from the thief's wallet to a new smart contract, and everyone agreed to validate that transaction even though it wasn't signed by a private key.
I can't quite tell whether you're trying to underscore a point about cryptocoins' benefits or if you're misunderstanding the conversation.
Just in case it's the latter -- I was probably a bit too fast n loose with the quotes around "fraudulent" so I will explain in more detail.
From the article:
> Phishing was the most widely used hacking technique for ICOs, with hackers stealing up to $1.5 million in ICO proceeds per month, according to the report.
This is a kind of "fraud" which cryptocoins are not designed to thwart. If you steal someone's keys and take their money, it can't be returned to them unless the thief decides to return it. This is very much like cash.
The problem comes from decentralization. In the Real World, we usually defer to authorities when it comes to crime and restitution. The authorities come to a determination and publish their decree. This is very much centralized. Cryptocoins are decentralized and are simple automata. There's no authority that we can appeal to in order to reverse a transaction that was executed in bad faith. Part of the problem is that there's no way for the automaton to trust this authority without destabilizing the entire system.
To clarify, the network would basically be agreeing to honor the possibly already spent coins... and that isn't really going to happen at this point.
But in general the answer is no because once they have your bitcoin and cash out to cash who are you going to ask the money from? The person that just disappeared?
Since these ICOs are all running on top of some existing coin/blockchain, unless there is a native mechanism for undoing a transaction (I don't believe any mainstream coin/blockchain supports this), the only option would be a hard fork.
Side note: You'd also be impacting other transactions which have occurred after the transaction that you want to roll back. Considering how blocks incorporate the identity of previous blocks, all of the block-minters would have to participate in the roll back.
By the way, how would you verify that ICO tokens were actually stolen? In the modern world, that is normally done using a police report, but not everyone in the world is going to trust that.
And even with a police report, if the police are unable to get the stolen good back, then you're stuck. That's why people commonly take out insurance on their possessions, and why (in the United States) most cash deposits are insured by the NCUA or the FDIC (up to certain limits).