PANews reported on November 23 that, according to Cointelegraph, the Cardano network experienced a temporary chain split on Friday due to a "malformed" delegation transaction. This type of delegation transaction, which delegates ADA to a staking pool, while valid at the protocol level, can lead to code glitches that affect network functionality.
According to an incident report released by Intersect, an organization within the Cardano ecosystem, this "malformed" transaction exploited a vulnerability in an old code repository in the Cardano blockchain's underlying software library. This vulnerability caused disagreements among nodes regarding how to process the transaction, ultimately leading to a network split. The vulnerability was caused by an ADA staking pool operator named Homer J, who used AI-generated code to drive the transaction and has acknowledged responsibility for the network split. Staking pool operators have been instructed to download the latest version of their node software to fix the issue and reassemble the split chain into a single, complete blockchain.
This temporary split has sparked debate within the Cardano community. Some believe Homer J's actions helped expose critical vulnerabilities, while others, such as Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, claim it was an attack on the Cardano network, and the FBI has launched an investigation. One user quipped, "Nobody noticed the Cardano network partition because nobody was using it."


