The Juno blockchain recently had around 48 hours of downtime due to a malicious smart contract which broke the consensus, leading to an automatic halt to Juno block production.
What you need to know about the JUNO Chain Halt.
Never a dull moment for anyone following the JUNO project. Earlier this week, a planned upgrade was all set to be implemented on the chain. It is a pretty significant upgrade, which enables JUNO on-chain governance to directly control smart contracts. This is a unique and interesting approach, giving staked JUNO holders direct control over smart contracts.
The reason for this upgrade is to role out the "unity" solution to the JUNO Whale saga. The governance vote there was simply to upgrade the chain to remove tokens that one entity received in the airdrop that many felt they should not have. Needless to say, that caused some drama, and the following week during the voting period saw many people involved switch votes, argue and their even seemed to be division within the Core team building JUNO.
Anyway, the vote was passed, narrowly, and discussions have ensued to determine how to proceed. This leads us to the planned upgrade. Once this upgrade happens, then the next vote will set up a smart contract to control the "whale's" funds. Once the tokens are locked in this smart contract, then the risk to the chain from bad actions by the whale is greatly diminished, while negotiations can continue for a long term solution. With threats of lawsuits, forks and other destructive options on the table, I think a calmer and more measured approach was sought by the various parties involved.
Anyway, this upgrade, while initially being to enable a new (and pretty unique) functionality was planned, tested and just minutes away from being implemented.
Malicious attack.
Just before the upgrade time, block production ceased on JUNO. The chain had stopped. Now obviously chains don't just stop, something pretty major has to go wrong, or something very coordinated. After a significant effort from a number of parties, including the Core team, validators and community members, and even the teams from other Cosmos SDK chains - notably the Secret team - the cause of the Juno Chain Halt was determined.
Nothing to do with the planned upgrade, there had in fact been a malicious smart contract put on chain. This contract had broken the consensus of the chain. When Validators for a P.O.S. chain are not in consensus (effectively not in agreement about a block), the chain halts. So with consensus broken, the chain stopped. This is a feature of the Cosmos chains, and if block production continued, then there could be many consequences.
Dev's, Validators and others swung in to action, and first set about diagnosing the cause. Once that was determined, a patch was made to fix the problem. The team took its time testing it to make sure everything was safe, and then rolled out the patch, and the upgrade all in one hit. The upgrade worked, and over a few hours enough validators came back on line with the upgrades and changes that the chain eventually restarted.
The technical details of all this are beyond my understanding, but suffice to say that the chain was broken, the built in security halted the chain, fixes were put in place, and everything could restart securely. No Funds Were Lost.
Moving on.
So, once the chain came back to life, what happened next? Well, everyone perched outside the Gates of the Castle (Fortis Oeconomia) waiting for it to re-open. The most insane project I've seen for a long time came back on line soon enough. Delightfully, several days worth of rewards were waiting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, and with crypto prices overall dropping of late, the easily traded part of the FOT system - bFOT - sold off significantly. It is currently trading around $1 each, having been as high as $6 or $7 each not too long ago.
The Castle has new treats in store, with another two LP's coming on line in the last 24 hours, and the mysterious "Dungeon" feature due to open in a couple of days. This whole project is one for the most degenerate of Degen's, and always feels like it could collapse into a steaming pile of rubble any minute. The returns are so insane, that they are measuring DPR (Daily Percentage Return) instead of the usual APR (Annual Percentage Return). Still it is soo much fun for now, and the fast paced, manic project has brought a fresh energy and life to the community.
Next up will be the actual prop, with the coding and smart contract deployment included, to implement the compromise option to resolve (or to be more accurate safely postpone) the JUNO whale saga. Expect more discussion, but I think this debate will be less divisive than the last.
Other than that, the main thing on the agenda for the JUNO community is returning to asking "Wen $RAW?". The much anticipated, and long awaited airdrop of the new rewards and governance token for the Junoswap Dex.
Never a dull moment for JUNO holders.
Thanks for reading,
JK.
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