Cardano Testnet Is ‘Catastrophically Broken’: Ecosystem Dev

According to Dean, Cardano came dangerously close to striking “midnight” on the hypothetical nuclear clock.

Cardano Testnet breaks after “urgent” updates

Cardano’s testnet is broken, a prominent developer has warned.

Due to a bug in older versions of Cardano’s client software that was only recently discovered by the network’s community of developers, Layer 1 blockchain’s testnet is now incompatible and unable to support the latest client software.

🧵 (1/n) It is important to point out today that #Cardano #Testnet is **catastrophically** broken due to a bug in Cardano Node v 1.35.2. This was the version that we had previously been told was “Tested and Ready” for Vasil Hardfork. This error was only detected…

— Adam Dean (@adamKDean) 18 August 2022

Adam Dean, a leading ecosystem developer and former Cardano stake pool operator, tweeted a warning late Thursday that the Cardano testnet, which has been operating for two years, has become incompatible with the current version of the blockchain’s client software. “It is important to point out today that the Cardano Testnet is **catastrophically** broken due to a bug in Cardano Node v 1.35.2,” he claimed.

Input Output, the development company behind Cardano, had assured independent stake pool operators that Cardano Node version 1.34.2 had been thoroughly tested and ready for distribution. However, after most stake operators rushed to upgrade to the version to simulate a Vasil hardfork combiner event, operators ATADA and PoolTool discovered a critical bug in their client software that led to the creation of incompatible forks.

After the bug was discovered, Cardano released a new client software, Cardano Node 1.35.3, which is unable to sync with the original testnet and is currently running on two new testnets with no block history. Analyzes the situation on Crypto Capital Venture podcast today Dean said the latest developments warrant extreme caution. “There’s an abundance of caution at this point,” he said, explaining that the two new test nets “are not complete end-to-end yet,” meaning no one from the community has been able to thoroughly test them.

Dean said the level of “rushing” from Input Output to deploy the Vasil upgrade gave him uneasy feelings, indicating that the blockchain could have faced disaster if the community did not catch the bugs in time. “If there was an ‘atomic clock’ for Cardano, we were dangerously close to striking ‘midnight’.” wrote.

Called Cardano’s “most significant update” to date, the Vasil hard fork was originally scheduled to go live on June 29. But as the deadline approached, Input Output postponed the hard fork first until the last week of July and then for “a few more weeks” to allow more time for testing.

Despite the recent test outage drawing significant community attention, Input Output has not commented on the issue or signaled whether the Vasil upgrade will need to be delayed again. Cardano’s ADA token fell from $0.54 to $0.46 following news of the incident, marking a 13.3% pullback on the day.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.