November 21 network Cardano encountered a blockchain split caused by a transaction that exploited a bug in the node’s software. It temporarily split Block with a capitalization of almost $14 billion for two competing chains.
A malicious transaction bypassed validation on new node versions but was rejected by the legacy infrastructure, leading to inconsistent ledger states across the entire network. This anomaly largely replicated the issue observed on the testnet. Cardano a day earlier, which suggests that the exploit was tested in advance, according to development experts Cardano Intersect organizations.
It’s important to note that the network didn’t shut down, Intersect emphasized. Block production continued on both networks throughout the incident.
Technically, the network continued to operate, but major exchanges were forced to respond by suspending ADA transactions until the blockchain’s integrity was restored. Deposits and withdrawals were suspended on Coinbase. Upbit, Kraken and other trading platforms.
During the fork, block explorers crashed or displayed inconsistent information. Protocols DeFi exhibited an unstable state, as interactions with smart contracts were performed on one network, while the associated transactions were performed on another. Transaction confirmation times, typically measured in Cardano seconds, stretched to several minutes, or stopped completely.
Recall that fork The Bitcoin network came publicly and planned during the initial development of the blockchain and required the coordinated efforts of approximately half of the miners and the community as a whole, in the case of Cardano The point of failure was a mistake and a single transaction.
However, the development team Cardano was able to implement emergency fixes within three hours of discovering the issue, and by November 22, the network was operational based on natural consensus.
The incident caused the price of ADA to fall by 16% before recovering to its current price of $0,41 (CoinGecko data).
A few hours after the outage, developer «Homer J» admitted to forking the blockchain, calling his actions careless during testing. He also apologized to the community. Cardano.
The founder is tolerant of his own ugly statements and irresponsible actions. Cardano and co-founder of IOG Charles Hoskinson called the developer’s actions a «deliberate attack.»
It was completely personal… he’s trying to clear himself because he knows the FBI is already on the case,» Hoskinson wrote.
Hoskinson’s decision to involve federal investigators prompted one IOG employee to publicly announce his resignation from the developer. Cardano.
A social media user named «effectfully,» who identified himself as Roman, a Plutus language developer at IOG, wrote that they had made mistakes in simulated cyberattacks before and were concerned that future development errors could lead to such unjustified legal consequences.
I didn’t think there was a risk of being targeted by the authorities for saying unpleasant things online. For the record, most of the [vulnerabilities] in the computing layer were either discovered by me personally or arose from my own considerations.