The group behind the Domain that is decentralized name (DNS) task, Handshake, recently patched a bug which could have inflated the supply of HNS coins.
Whenever it existed in Handshake’s rule, the bug was never ever exploited and no user funds or domain information had been compromised, Handshake’s developers write in a post.
“A flaw had been discovered in the Handshake protocol that could accidentally raise the HNS that is total coin beyond its designed limits,” the post reads. “A individual by having a name that is reserved may have accidentally produced small amounts of additional HNS by modifying their wallet. A harmful miner could create almost limitless extra HNS in every block into the worst-case scenario. The bug had been never ever exploited and it is now fixed.”
The group recommends miners and node operators to update to the variation asap that is newest.
Handshake is just a domain that is decentralized service, wherein users should buy Handshake names, an alternate to the DNS identifiers traditionally used for accessing internet sites (Handshake users spend for these in HNS token). The bug might have offered users who possess reported Handshake names the capability to accidentally print additional HNS tokens per your blog post.
Matthew Zipkin, previous designer at BitGo and a factor to Bcoin, alerted the team of this vulnerability on March 24. From here, Handshake developer (and Lightning system architect) Joseph Poon and Handshake that is fellow dev Jeffrey coded fixes that have been rolled out to HNS mining pools first.
The team approached miners like F2Pool and Poolin first since the bug needed Handshake’s that is overhauling rule the post reads.
“This flaw is not only an implementation bug that would be fixed with a pc software spot. It’s a problem with the design for the Handshake protocol therefore it impacts every user and all nodes which are full. The way that is just fix this sort of problem is with a soft fork, which adds brand new guidelines to the protocol and it is enforced by miners,” they say.
“Soft forks” are blockchain upgrades where brand new versions of a software are manufactured compatible with older variations and, as the post admits, they typically happen with total community participation. Handshake’s group executed this crisis fork that is soft “the flaw could never be disclosed until the new protocol guidelines had been in place and enforced by just as much hashrate as you possibly can,” the group claims in the post.