Core DAO, the organization behind the Core network, is preparing an emergency hard fork after validators were able to claim more CORE rewards than the protocol had intended to issue. In an official update, Core said the incident has been contained and that the planned fork will be a forward upgrade. The project stressed that the fork will not roll back the network or reverse any previously confirmed transactions, which points to an effort to preserve the chain's historical record while correcting the reward mechanism.
The issue first surfaced after a small number of validators accrued rewards significantly above the intended issuance, according to a status update published on Monday. Core described the problem as isolated to reward issuance, and emphasized that user assets were unaffected. The project also said that malicious validators can no longer continue to draw excess rewards, indicating that immediate mitigation steps were taken to stop the bug from being exploited further.
Core network overview
Core DAO is the organization behind the Core network and its native token, CORE. The token is used for staking, paying transaction fees, and participating in governance decisions. Validators are responsible for producing blocks and securing the blockchain, and they earn rewards from fees and newly issued tokens. The network depends on an issuance schedule that should produce a predictable amount of CORE over time. When that schedule is disrupted, the resulting imbalance affects token supply and can have broader economic consequences for those who hold or stake the asset.
Because the reward mechanism is part of the blockchain's basic protocol, a patch to fix it must be implemented with care. Changes to the reward code automatically affect all participants who run software. A transaction-level fix would not be enough if the consensus rules allowed validators to mint more than the intended amount. This is one reason why Core's answer involves a hard fork rather than a simpler smart-contract modification.
Incident response and containment
Core has promised to publish a technical postmortem that will explain what went wrong. However, several important details have not yet been disclosed. The project has not said how much CORE was produced during the incident, how long the unusual activity lasted, whether any of the additional tokens entered circulating supply, or what exact vulnerability allowed the excess rewards to be generated. For stakeholders and exchange platforms, these unknowns create a difficult environment in which to assess potential market impact and plan the necessary upgrades.
In its public update, Core described the affected validators as malicious. That wording suggests the project views the activity as deliberate rather than an accidental result of misconfigured software. The network's decision to contain the issue and disable the ability to draw excess rewards may involve temporary validator bans or modifications to the reward distribution contract. Such measures can be reversed or made permanent depending on what the postmortem reveals.
Exchanges restrict CORE transfers
A number of trading platforms moved quickly to limit exposure to the Core network. Coinbase paused sends and receives on the network, while Bithumb and Coinone, both based in South Korea, suspended deposits and withdrawals after reporting suspected or confirmed security concerns. Bitget also suspended CORE deposits and withdrawals, with the exchange saying it was doing so due to wallet maintenance. LBank suspended CORE deposits and referred to the project's requirements. These precautionary restrictions are common in the industry when a blockchain issue is reported. They give node operators and technical teams time to verify the network's state and ensure that any hard fork is implemented safely.
How hard forks work
A hard fork is a permanent divergence in a blockchain's protocol. It is one of the few tools available to correct a severe vulnerability or to implement changes that require all nodes to upgrade. Hard forks are often deployed during emergencies caused by smart contract exploits, bridge attacks, or consensus-level bugs. In this case, Core's upgrade appears intended to prevent additional over-issuance and to synchronize the network around a fixed version of the reward rules. By calling it a forward upgrade, Core is indicating that no chain history will be rewritten. The distinction is important: a rollback would invalidate already confirmed transactions and could cause double-spending, which would create even more severe
Source: Cointelegraph News