EIP 867 published here on GitHub outlines a method of Ethereum recovery to deal with lost or stolen funds.

Of course - as with all things tech, what sounds like a solution to some becomes a new feature to abuse for others - which is why EIP 867 has gotten mixed reactions. The EIP 867 developers acknowledge this battle of ideas, saying:

"The issue of fund recovery on the Ethereum blockchain is often controversial. Frozen fund recovery proposals are almost never successful due to the relatively ad-hoc nature of such requests and the subjectivity that is often required to evaluate the merits. This EIP attempts to remove these barriers by providing both a standardized format for fund recovery EIPs and an objective standard by which to measure future proposals."

There's currently hundreds millions of dollars worth of lost Ethereum, often caused by a simple typo in a smart contract, plus countless people who lost funds during the parity contract issue, floating around the Ethereum blockchain. We know who it belongs to, but there's no method to retrieve them yet.

While the future of EIP 867 officially being added to Ethereum is unknown, the demand for such a feature is growing.

But so is the opposition - as many believe irreversible transactions are one of the biggest upsides to blockchain technology. Included on the oppising side is Vitalik Buterin himself.

One possibility worth noting - this feature may appear, but not as the official "Ethereum" - some EIP 867 supporters have proposed making it happen via a hardfork of their own.