Sui launches the 'Universal Whitelist' feature; is it real security coverage or a system backdoor?
Sui quietly launched a highly controversial new feature yesterday: whitelist transactions can bypass all security checks, including signature verification, access control, and even blacklist restrictions. As long as the official constructs the transaction in advance, even if the account is locked, it can still be 'forced to execute' the operation.
On the surface, this is an emergency channel designed to respond to extreme security incidents, such as helping users recover stolen assets or freeze hacker funds. But at a deeper level, this also essentially lays a 'privileged entry' for the chain itself.
Benefits:
- Improves the chain's emergency handling capability in security incidents;
- Facilitates rapid response in compliance or user rights protection in the future.
Risks:
- The decentralized trust foundation is compromised; if abused, it is, in a sense, no longer 'immutable';
- Who holds the operational authority over the whitelist? Is there multi-signature protection? Lack of public transparency.
Sui's move is a trade-off of 'exchanging practicality for trust'; whether users will accept it in the future depends on whether its mechanisms can truly be auditable and constrained, rather than leaving themselves with a 'stealth key'.
