F2Pool Co-Founder Wang Chun Says Stakefish Cannot Judge Off-Chain Ownership Claims

F2Pool co-founder and stakefish founder Wang Chun said Oleksii Trofimchuk filed a lawsuit against Lido Finance and stakefish on September 8 in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California, alleging that after his wallet was compromised, competing MEV bots submitted high-priority-fee transactions to claim the ETH. According to Foresight News, Wang said stakefish, as a validator, only packages valid transactions under Ethereum protocol rules and cannot and should not rule on off-chain ownership or competing asset claims. He warned that requiring protocol-following validators to recover rewards based on off-chain claims would force them to filter transactions using ownership assertions they cannot independently verify, creating legal uncertainty for staking rewards and harming Ethereum's decentralization and credible neutrality. According to Foresight News, the case stems from the theft of Trofimchuk's validator withdrawal address private key in April 2023, when about 600 ETH and staking rewards were stolen. In October 2024, when the stolen funds arrived, white-hat MEV arbitrageurs and the hacker engaged in an on-chain race for the funds, and some high fees flowed into a stakefish-related service contract. The white-hat side publicly requested a refund but did not receive a response. Trofimchuk claims in the lawsuit that Lido and stakefish profited by about $1.25 million and were unjustly enriched.