Oleksii Trofimchuk has filed a lawsuit against @LidoFinance and us in Santa Clara County Superior Court on September 8, alleging that after his wallet was compromised, competing MEV bots submitted high-priority-fee transactions to claim the ETH. As a validator, @stakefish includes valid transactions under Ethereum’s protocol rules. We do not and cannot determine off-chain ownership or adjudicate competing claims to assets. Requiring protocol-following validators to claw back rewards based on off-chain claims would set a dangerous precedent. It would pressure validators to filter transactions based on legal or ownership claims they cannot independently verify, put staking rewards in legal uncertainty, and undermine Ethereum’s decentralization and credible neutrality. This is something we believe is important to defend.