Cardano Founder Breaks Silence on Recent Spam Attack on Network

Recently, the Cardano network was put to the test as it faced a spam attack that threatened to disrupt its operations.

According to Elraulito, Fluid Token’s chief technical officer, the DDOS attack that occurred late Tuesday began at block 10,487,530, with each transaction running 194 smart contracts. The attacker spent 0.9 ADA per transaction and packed each block with several transactions in an attempt to stress the network.

However, the attempt was unsuccessful and was mitigated before any damage was done, and the network continued to operate normally.

In response to the incident, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson took to social media to offer an update from Intersect, a member-based organization supporting the Cardano ecosystem, while further amplifying the message with a YouTube video that summarized the incident.

In a separate tweet, Hoskinson responded with a GIF graphic to a user’s tweet about Cardano’s resilience in the aftermath of the DDOS attack.

Network performance and impact

According to Intersect, the Cardano network has been experiencing a higher load than normal due to the spam attack. This has caused some stake pool operators (SPOs) to face difficulties, primarily due to an intensification in block height battles. Despite these challenges, the Cardano network has remained resilient.

The Cardano chain continued to function as expected, with only a small impact on overall transaction timings and some reduction in chain density.

While thanking the Cardano community for its swift response and support in identifying the source of the spam attack on the Cardano mainnet, Intersect disclosed that it has coordinated a technical task force with partners from the ecosystem to identify potential solutions and complement the community’s efforts in resolving the issue.

Looking forward, the task force will work to identify and test a solution that will blunt this kind of spam attack and will continue to keep the community updated via Discord and social channels. Once a solution has been properly tested and deployed, the new node version that SPOs can upgrade to will be made public.