Core DAO said on Sept. 2 that it had contained an excess validator-reward issue, preventing malicious validators from drawing further rewards, and was coordinating an emergency hard fork. The planned change will be a forward upgrade rather than a rollback, according to the network's announcement.
Core DAO says excess-reward claims are contained
The update is the most concrete indication so far that the protocol has stopped the additional reward claims at the center of the incident. Core DAO did not provide a deployment date, implementation details or a timetable for the emergency hard fork in its Sept. 2 statement.
By characterizing the fork as forward-only, the DAO distinguished the planned upgrade from a chain rollback. Its statement did not say how the upgrade would address rewards that had already accrued.
The undisclosed excess CORE supply
Core DAO first disclosed the issue on Aug. 31, saying that a small number of validators had accrued rewards above the protocol's intended issuance. It said at the time that user assets, network security and fund custody were unaffected.
The key supply questions remain unanswered. Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 2 that Core DAO had not disclosed the amount of excess CORE issued, the duration of the activity or whether the tokens had entered circulation. Those omissions limit an assessment of the incident's effect on token supply even as the DAO says further claims have been halted.
Validator rewards combine minted CORE and transaction fees
The issuance question matters because validator compensation is not limited to transaction fees. Core's validator documentation says rewards include newly minted CORE and fees, with 90% allocated to validators and 10% sent to the System Reward Contract.
Core DAO has not publicly quantified how the rewards accrued by the affected validators compared with the protocol's intended issuance.
Coinbase had temporarily paused CORE sends and receives
On Aug. 30, Coinbase temporarily paused CORE sends and receives on the Core DAO network, according to its status page, which listed the incident as “Paused Sends/Receives - Core DAO Network.” Coinbase said CORE buys, sells, conversions and fiat transactions were unaffected.
The status information supports a transfer disruption but does not show whether it was directly linked to the validator-reward issue or when service resumed.
