Of 601 intervention-eligible cases, only 157 (26.1%) involved a successful override that preserved capital. The $9.60B at risk was addressed by three authority tiers—Signer Sets, Delegated Bodies, and Governance—each with distinct speed–legitimacy tradeoffs that determine the ultimate effectiveness of emergency response.
Between 2020 and 2024, intervention attempts grew from fewer than 5 per year to over 40, reflecting the professionalisation of security monitoring. Peak intervention intensity coincides with peak exploit frequency in 2022–2023, when Security Councils and automated circuit breakers became standard infrastructure at major protocols.
Signer Sets (team multisigs) handle 71.2% of all interventions by count with a median response time of 30 minutes. Delegated Bodies (Security Councils) cover 17.3% of cases but protect $1.10B—the highest absolute value saved. Governance votes achieve a 73.2% success rate when invoked but take 30+ days, limiting their use to post-incident recovery rather than real-time containment.
Account-level overrides (freezing specific addresses) represent the narrowest scope and lowest collateral impact: they succeeded in 92% of cases when paired with a Delegated Body authority. Protocol-wide pauses have broader blast radius and lower success rates (58.3%). The data confirms that scope-limited interventions consistently outperform global pauses in both speed and outcome.
Signer Set success rates improved from 45% (pre-2022) to 68% (post-2023) as teams adopted 24/7 monitoring, automated alerting (Hypernative, Forta), and pre-signed emergency transactions. Delegated Bodies showed the largest improvement, rising from ad-hoc responses to formalised Security Council playbooks with sub-hour execution guarantees.
Across all authority tiers, the aggregate Containment Success Rate stands at 26.0% ($2.51B of $9.60B). Delegated Bodies lead in value protected per case ($6.4M median), while Signer Sets lead in frequency but with a lower median save ($1.2M). The gap between tiers narrows in post-2023 data, suggesting convergence toward professionalised response regardless of authority type.
A clear shift toward granular, asset-specific overrides is evident since 2022: Account-level actions rose from 15% (2020) to 45% (2024) of all interventions, while Protocol-wide pauses declined from 60% to 25%. This precision trend reduces collateral disruption to honest users and narrows the centralisation surface of each intervention.