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# Ocean Protocol chooses to Hard Fork over KuCoin Hack
- URL: https://dexplain.com/ocean-protocol-chooses-to-hard-fork-over-kucoin-hack/
- Published: 2020-09-27T14:59:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-12-01T15:01:16.000Z
- Description: Ocean Protocol chooses to hard fork over KuCoin hack. OCEAN token transfers were frozen and then a new contract was issued. Decentralized?
- Author: wizardfromspace
- Tags: Ocean Protocol, KuCoin, Cryptocurrency, Crypto News

On Friday 25th, the cryptocurrency exchange [KuCoin was hacked](https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-kucoin-security-incident-update?ref=dexplain.com), resulting in over $203 million in coins being stolen. The bulk of the stolen funds appeared to be in [Altcoins](https://dexplain.com/tag/altcoins), as a result, many crypto projects decided to start freezing their tokens. [Ocean Protocol](https://dexplain.com/tag/ocean-protocol) seemed to take the most drastic action, implementing a hard fork to render all of the stolen OCEAN worthless.

## Why did Ocean Protocol hard fork?

Roughly $8.6 million worth of [OCEAN tokens](https://dexplain.com/ocean-protocol-completes-token-swap/) were stolen from the KuCoin exchange. Meaning that 21 million OCEAN could be dumped on the market by the hacker. The team immediately used a pause function in the token’s smart contract code to stop any transfers. They then chose to issue [a hard fork](https://dexplain.com/vite-hard-fork-plans-for-zero-fees-stablecoin-trading/) and deploy a new token entirely. However, the swift actions seem to be creating a rift in the community with many asking why this function exists in the first place.

**Not a decentralized marketplace…** If we break it down, the team has effectively showcased that Ocean Protocol can be paused at any time. It is worrying that a project described as a decentralized data marketplace has shown they may censor their protocol at any time.

- Not only Ocean has taken this path of freezing tokens. Orion, Covesting, SilentNotary, Velo Labs, and Kardia Chain all made similar moves to stop the hacker from dumping stolen funds.

**So what is the token for…** Ocean Protocol may have to be ready to answer some hard questions during the next community AMA. Because, it appears pausing the token and then issuing a hard fork, strangely, did not disturb the [data marketplace](https://dexplain.com/what-is-singularitynet-agi-token-review/). Which begs questions around what the data marketplace runs on and how it interacts with the token.