Cardano Chain Fork Due to Stake Pool Operator Error Does Not Result in User Fund Loss

On November 22nd, as reported by Decrypt, the Cardano blockchain split into two chains on Friday. This was caused by a format error in a delegation transaction, which triggered a software bug. The transaction was validated on the new version nodes but rejected by the old version software, resulting in a network fork. The Cardano ecosystem governance organization Intersect stated in an incident report that this "toxic" transaction exploited a vulnerability in the underlying software library, splitting the network into a "poisoned" chain containing the transaction and a "healthy" chain without it. Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder, initially claimed that this was a "premeditated attack." However, later, a user named Homer J. publicly admitted responsibility, stating that their actions were negligent while trying to reproduce the "bad transaction" and relying on AI-generated instructions. The user stated that there was no malicious intent and no economic benefit was gained. Intersect confirmed that there was no loss of user funds, and most retail wallets were not affected. Due to this incident, the ADA token price dropped by more than 6%.