Polygon’s surprise code change triggers questions and controversies

On web3, there are no more disputed words than “decentralization”. So if someone questions the decentralization of a blockchain, it will draw a crowd.

One tweet by engineer Nathan Worsley, on December 15, claiming that Polygon forced its blockchain to fork without warning, raised his eyebrows. That’s because a project would have to be centralized for nodes to be updated so easily.

Worsley’s tweet has garnered more than 1,800 likes on Twitter, and people like Chris Blec , an ardent critic of the security practices of many DeFi projects, joined in the conversation. “It’s more surprising to me that people are still shocked that Polygon is centralized enough to pull off this kind of upgrade so quickly.,” he said.

Vulnerability

Polygon caters to ETH users and offers several ways to make transactions cheaper and faster. Polygon did not respond to messages sent through your contact page with the press or public relations representative. Co-founder Mihailo Bjelic  responded on Twitter, saying the codebase change was made in response to a vulnerability found by one of the project’s security partners.

Decentralization is perhaps the core value proposition of blockchains in the eyes of many proponents. An unobjectionable substrate through which anyone can transfer value and interact with DeFi applications is a powerful motivator for people who want to use their money outside the centralized control of the parties. Because of that, “centralized” is one of the worst things a person can call a blockchain.

Fundamental problem

In defending Polygon’s choice to keep the change quiet, co-founder and COO Sandeep Naiwal tweeted that, as a security update, it was better to push the change without publishing it, as this could have led to the vulnerability being exploited.

Not everyone was convinced. Alex Pillar, founder of Pallaemon Digital, which offers consulting services in BTC, suggested sarcastically on twitter that Polygon is more like a traditional corporation than a decentralized blockchain.

“I find the lack of decentralization in DeFi an absolutely fundamental issue, and I don’t understand why the community is so tolerant of it,” Pilar told The Defiant through a Twitter DM.

Although the nature of the Polygon codebase change and how it has proliferated across project nodes is still unclear, it is clear that decentralization is still a controversial topic in the web3 world.