F2Pool Co-founder Chun: Validators Should Not Pursue Rewards Based on Off-chain Claims
Chun, co-founder of F2Pool and founder of stakefish, stated that Oleksii Trofimchuk filed a lawsuit against Lido Finance and Stakefish in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California, on September 8, claiming that after his wallet was stolen, competing MEV bots used high-priority fee transactions to claim the relevant ETH.
Chun's position is that Stakefish, as a validator, only packages legitimate transactions according to Ethereum protocol rules and should not determine off-chain ownership or competitive asset claims. If validators adhering to the protocol are required to recover rewards based on unverifiable off-chain claims, it will force nodes to filter transactions based on ownership narratives, leading to legal uncertainty in staking rewards and undermining Ethereum's decentralization and trusted neutrality.
The incident dates back to April 2023. The plaintiff claims that his long-used wallet and funds related to nine validators were stolen, resulting in a loss of about 600 ETH, valued at approximately $2.2 million at the time. After the hacker gained control of the withdrawal address's private key, they initiated a withdrawal; the funds are expected to be available around October 2024, during which white-hat MEV and the hacker raced to claim the high fees on-chain. Some of the high fees flowed into service contracts related to stakefish. The white-hat party publicly requested a refund but received no response. The lawsuit alleges that Lido and stakefish improperly profited by about $1.25 million and claims that validators, after charging service fees, should distribute the remaining rewards to staking clients, constituting conversion of property, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices.
The plaintiff earlier publicly stated that he was forced to send transactions to unfamiliar addresses at nearly 100% fees, with an intermediary taking about $1.25 million in fees while arguing for "neutrality." Chun cited on-chain records from two years ago regarding this "race to claim," pinpointing the dispute to the struggle for control after the theft of the withdrawal address's private key, rather than validators actively selecting stolen funds.
From a market mechanism perspective, this is a judicial request for neutral pricing in the protocol. The buyers are those hoping to write off-chain ownership into block selection, while the sellers are validators and MEV searchers packaging transactions at the highest priority fees. The beneficiaries are node operators who continue to auction blocks based on gas without reviewing cases; the pressured parties are Lido and stakefish's compliance exposure, as well as all staking service providers that may be required to "determine who the owner is before packaging." The flow of funds is that the stolen ETH is intercepted by high-priority fee transactions when released from the withdrawal queue, with fees going to proposers and related contracts, and the remainder distributed according to staking shares; the court is now pursuing whether this intercepted fee belongs to the proceeds of the crime.
On-chain supplement: The dispute centers on the moment of receipt after the withdrawal certificate was stolen, rather than a direct breach of the protocol treasury. Lido has internal penalties for nodes regarding "MEV theft," addressing deviations of reward addresses from the protocol treasury, which is not the same set of rules as the current "filtering transactions based on off-chain ownership claims."
Source: Public Information
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Chun positions stakefish as the protocol execution layer: it packages valid transactions without regard for judicial opinions. This line has continued from the F2Pool era to the staking pool—miners/validators do not review cases, which is his consistent definition of neutrality. Trofimchuk, on the other hand, frames the same action as receiving stolen goods: the private key was lost, and when the withdrawal was received, a gas war ensued, with nodes taking high-priority fees and distributing the remainder to clients. The timeline of theft in 2023, receipt in 2024, and the lawsuit filed in Santa Clara in 2026 indicates that the withdrawal queue froze the "ownership dispute" for over a year, and it only became a litigable cash flow at the moment of unfreezing.
The capital flow is through MEV auctions. Whoever offers a higher priority fee first accesses the newly received ETH; validators receive a proposer reward per protocol, and Lido then distributes the remainder to stETH holders according to node shares. The plaintiff seeks to determine whether this layer of "intermediary fees constitutes unjust enrichment." If the California court requires nodes to refund based on off-chain claims, the pricing of staking services will need to include legal contingent liabilities: every high-fee transaction could later be identified as a channel for stolen funds. Resource allocation will shift from "improving block efficiency" to "establishing transaction filtering and legal pre-review," with costs shared among all delegators.
This is analogous to the block review after Tornado sanctions and the OFAC list forcing some validators to skip certain transactions: once neutrality is compromised, the list will expand from sanctioned addresses to ownership claims. The industry is at a stage of judicial collision following the scaling of staking—Lido and professional nodes have become the main entry points for Ethereum block production, making them the easiest targets for state court lawsuits. Trusted neutrality has shifted from a technical slogan to a litigation defense.
Structural judgment pertains to regulatory changes challenging protocol pricing power. The mechanism is: on-chain only recognizes private keys and valid transactions, while off-chain only recognizes ownership and equity law. The two overlap at the moment of withdrawal receipt, with high-priority fees turning disputes into distributable cash. If the court rules that nodes must refund, validators will shift from auctioneers to property registrars; if neutrality is upheld, owners can only pursue hackers and racing bots, not the packagers.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Validators package transactions, not register property rights
High-priority fees are auctions, not judgments against owners
Filtering block production with off-chain lawsuits is equivalent to adding a court plugin to the protocol