Cardano Experiences Temporary Chain Split After Malformed Transaction
Cardano briefly split into two chains on Friday after a malformed transaction was processed differently by older and newer node versions, creating a temporary network divergence.
Intersect, the governance body for the Cardano ecosystem, said newer nodes accepted the transaction while older nodes rejected it. The mismatch exploited a bug in a software library, causing some block producers to build on a “poisoned” chain and others to remain on the canonical “healthy” chain.
The transaction originated from a wallet linked to a former testnet participant, and the incident is under investigation as a potential cyberattack. Developers released patched node software, and operators were instructed to upgrade to restore network uniformity.
Exchanges and wallets paused deposits and withdrawals as a precaution, but no user funds were lost, and most retail wallets were unaffected.
Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson described the event as a targeted attack by a disgruntled stake-pool operator, noting that block producers lost rewards and DeFi protocols experienced inconsistent states. He warned that full network recovery could take weeks.
