No hardfork, says Parity

After more than $275 million worth of Ether was frozen last month, Parity Technologies proposed changes in the Ethereum blockchain network to regain access to the locked ether tokens.

The tokens were frozen due to the carelessness of the Parity team when an important code library got deleted. On Github, users did identify a gap in the Parity's code but the company did not take adequate action in time. This resulted in the evident accident that has influenced more than 500 parity wallets.

In order to solve the problem, Parity’s team proposed four solutions to the Ethereum community. All the proposed solutions, however, required a hardfork in the network. The possibility of a hardfork was vehemently rejected by the community. As such, Parity has decided that it will not be pursuing any approach that would include a hardfork.

The wallets still remain frozen and the $275 million worth of Ether cannot be accessed by their owners. The community is clearly upset with Parity’s inability to solve this issue and are blaming them for their carelessness.

Afri Schoedon, the spokesperson for Parity, spoke to CoinDesk to clarify the proposed solutions. He explained that due to the fact that all of the proposed protocol changes were unable to achieve a critical mass of support, they were all rejected.

Parity’s next step is still unclear and the company has yet to make an official announcement about how the frozen ether will be accessed by their rightful owners. However, the company did release a tweet in which it stated that they will be reviewing all possible options for the whole matter.

The proposal of hardfork was not only rejected by Ethereum users, but also by its developers. Several users pointed out that changes in the protocol could result in unpredictable outcomes that would unnecessarily endanger the integrity of the network.