The Avalanche network experienced a slowdown yesterday. I want to provide a short update on what happened, with a full analysis to be provided next week.
The Pangolin launch generated enormous activity, as I’m sure you’ve already heard. This activity triggered a nondeterministic bug in the network layer, related to caches, that led to a block validity check being skipped.
As a result, 57 X-chain to C-chain coin mint transactions were not subject to requisite checking in the client. This led to invalid minting of ~790.2 AVAX, corresponding to ~$40k USD, on the C-chain. It also caused the network to slow down. Nothing else was affected.
This invalid minting was the result of a bug in the client code, not a safety failure of the network or an error in the protocol. It is identical in nature to the Bitcoin underflow bug that enabled the creation of 4 billion BTC and required a patch.
The client was rapidly patched to fix this issue, which enabled all nodes to quickly regain consensus at the same tips.
Code is law. No funds were lost, and because Avalanche is a permissionless and immutable blockchain, no transactions were or could be rolled back.
Avalanche explorers may show erroneous information until patched to handle this unexpected event. Interested parties can verify the foregoing by looking through the fix: docs.avax.network/build/release-….
Overall, we are proud of the speed and nature of the community response. If Avalanche had been centralized, the mint could have been reversed and the bug would have been resolved instantly.
All systems pioneering new technologies will hit road bumps, and Avalanche is stronger today as a result.
And the people who received 790.2 AVAX, enjoy your bug bounty! Love you all for being early adopters ♥️.
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