2. Fork the blockchain to block the stolen coins and effectively destroy them.
Vericoin will survive. Hacker has no coins. No threat to system. Coin amount reduced, value goes up.
Mintpal customers lose, this is Mintpal and the hackers fault. Mintpal needs to reimburse.
Mintpal could die.
Sorry, but I believe this option 2 doesn't exist at all.
How can you possibly admit that certain coins are invalid because they were stolen and not return them to their owners? It makes no sense whatsoever. You either ignore the crime or give them back to their owners.
It would be similar to Mintpal losing the keys to their wallet.
They made a mistake. Responsibility belongs to them,
if they admit the hack and there is fear that coins end up with an immoral entity that could harm the infrastructure, this would be a way to protect the infrastructure.
Intuitively it might feel wrong but think about it a bit more.
This option exists because it is a compromise.
In the compromise, people will not be able to call it a chargeback or a bailout hence the reputation of VRC will be spared.
VRC devs feel they have to act out of 51% attack fear. This will negate it.
The community will support this decision if it is either this or option 1, denying hacker the coin or letting the hacker have the coin.
The only people who will feel very strongly against this decision are not VRC holders in general, just those who left a lot of their money on an exchange. This will also be a lesson for them then.
Actually in my perfect world, all 3 options would be created by devs and then community can decide which blockchain to support and build on.
you can only "destroy" the coins by hard coding and blocking the address that holds them..
given that vericoin has its own inbuilt mixing service. I am not sure that all the coins would be stored in the one location for long or are even traceable.
if the coins get mixed and split up into numerous addresses then there is virtually no hope of "destroying" them.
what you would have to do is shut down the entire network and then block each address that has the coins.. you cannot do this while the network is running because the thief can simply keep moving the coins to different addresses
for all intents and purposes the devs probably went with option 3 .. roll back (effectively destroying every transaction that has happened since the hack) because option 2 was simply not practical.