Cardano News Today: Three-Year-Old Bug Sparks FBI Probe as Cardano's $14B Chain Splits

The FBI has intervened following a significant chain split on the Cardano blockchain, an incident attributed to a "careless" experiment by a stake pool operator. The event, which temporarily fractured the $14 billion network into two competing chains, exposed a three-year-old software bug in node validation processes. The split occurred on November 21 after a malformed delegation transaction bypassed checks on newer node versions while being rejected by older infrastructure, creating incompatible ledger states.

Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano, publicly accused the actor of orchestrating a "premeditated attack" aimed at damaging the network's reputation. The individual, identified as a participant in Cardano's Incentivized Testnet (ITN) era, issued a public apology, admitting the experiment began as a "personal challenge" to test the network's resilience. Despite the apology, Hoskinson emphasized the FBI's involvement in the investigation, stating the actor "knows the FBI is already involved" according to reports.

Emergency patches deployed by developers within three hours helped the network converge through natural consensus by November 22. However, the incident triggered widespread disruptions. Major exchanges like Coinbase paused ADA operations for over 14 hours, while block explorers and DeFi protocols faced inconsistent data across the split chains. Stake pool operators reported lost block rewards due to "double spends," compounding the technical and financial fallout.

The market reaction was swift. ADA's price dropped over 5.9% in 24 hours to $0.4013, exacerbating broader crypto market declines. Analysts highlighted the incident as a "perfect storm" of technical vulnerability, regulatory scrutiny, and investor skepticism, with some predicting further declines to $0.30 if key support levels fail.

The FBI's involvement underscores growing regulatory interest in blockchain security. While Cardano's governance organization, Intersect, confirmed the network never stalled and block production continued, the incident has intensified debates about decentralization and governance readiness for upcoming upgrades like the Midnight sidechain launch.