Cardano developers feel insecure about the Vasil hard fork

Cardano developer Adam Dean on August 18 Twitter thread revealed a bug in the Cardano node version 1.35.2 causing issues for the Cardano Testnet.

🧵 (1/n) It’s important to point out today that the #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 the Vasil Hardfork. This bug was only discovered…

— Adam Dean (@adamKDean) August 18, 2022

 According to Dean, the bug was discovered in a node that was previously said to be “tested and ready.”

The bug created incompatible forks and reduced chain density. The bug was discovered by an on-chain investigation from the pool backing Cardano Operator, ATADA Stakepool, and Pooltool. As a result, the issue of versions 1.35.2 and 1.34.1 was discovered.

Dean emphasized how most operators have upgraded “to 1.35.2 on the testnet to simulate the Vasil HFC event,” resulting in version 1.35.3 being out of sync with the chain.

According to Dean, version 1.35.3 is currently being tested on “two new testnets” that do not have a block history like the testnet (which has gone through all of the previous Cardano HFC events) or simulated multi-node version blocks on chain.”

Dean mentioned that the “rush” of the Vasil hard fork made him uneasy.

He is asking IO engineering and Charles Hoskinson to implement the appropriate Disaster Recovering tools as revealed during the testnet launch. Charles Hoskinson has responded to the community’s reaction to news of the bug in testnet version 1.35.2.

According to Hoskinson, the noise surrounding the upgrade by stake pool operators is rather odd, adding that “the code that caused the crash on the testnet has been removed.”

The Cardano creator said the community could still decide to delay the launch of the Vasil hard fork but wondered if that decision was worth it for the Dapp developers.

Meanwhile, some Cardano community members didn’t follow through on Hoskinson’s comment, but Hoskinson urged them to upgrade the nodes to version 1.35.3.

Cardano’s Vasil upgrade has been delayed twice. Hoskinson has revealed that testing has discovered three separate bugs, with the development of three new versions of the software.