Blockchain Halt Comparison: Cronos, Ontology, and ICON

Three major blockchain networks halted production within four days due to separate incidents. Cronos, Ontology, and ICON all took different approaches to mitigate the damage.

Cronos was affected by an exploit on Tectonic, a decentralized finance protocol that allows users to lend and borrow cryptocurrency.Validators for the Cronos network made the decision to halt production and restore the blockchain to its state before the incident, effectively discarding any transactions that occurred afterwards.

The Cronos team claimed that this action was taken by consensus among validators, but did not provide a voting threshold or list of participants in the restart notice. The move also raised questions about the extent of control held by different stakeholders within the network.

Ontology and ICON took more limited measures to address their respective issues. Ontology paused block production while investigating malicious activity, while ICON halted production after detecting a replay exploit in migration contracts.