Cardano Experiences Mainnet Split Due to Malformed Transaction
- On Nov. 21, Cardano’s mainnet bifurcated into two chains for approximately 14.5 hours after a malformed staking-delegation transaction exploited a dormant bug.
- The incident led to exchanges pausing ADA transactions and wallets displaying conflicting balances, although no funds were lost.
- Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson notified the FBI regarding potential criminal interference linked to the transaction.
- A patch was released shortly after the incident, allowing nodes to reject the malformed transaction and restore consensus by the end of the day.
- The split was traced back to a legacy deserialization bug in hash-handling code that had been dormant since its introduction in late-2022.
This incident highlights vulnerabilities within single-client architectures like Cardano’s, revealing how software disagreements can lead to significant network issues without losing funds or halting operations entirely.
Ultimately, Cardano managed to merge back into a single chain within hours due to proactive measures taken by developers and stakeholders involved in the network.(Source)
