Core Validators Exploit Reward Flaw, Emergency Hard Fork Underway

Core DAO, the organization behind the Layer 1 blockchain Core, has confirmed that a group of validators exploited a flaw in the protocol's reward distribution mechanism to claim excess tokens. The incident led to an emergency hard fork, which is being coordinated with the validator set.

The Satoshi Plus consensus mechanism, used by Core, combines elements of Bitcoin's delegated proof-of-work and delegated proof-of-stake. This allows up to 90% of newly minted CORE tokens to flow to selected validators based on a complex scoring formula.

However, it appears that some validators found a way to exploit this system, claiming more tokens than the protocol was designed to issue. The exact volume of excess tokens is still unclear, but the incident has already led to exchanges taking precautionary measures.