Binance Smart Chain Decides to Undergo Hard Fork after $100 Million Hack

Almost a week after the $100 million exploit of the Binance Smart Chain, Binance has now decided to undergo a hard fork for the smart contract-enabled blockchain. Last week on October 6, the exploit had drained the blockchain by a staggering $100 million.

Binance Smart Chain Hard Fork

Binance will release the hard fork upgrade for both the testnet and the mainnet. The crypto exchange added that “this release is a temporary urgent patch to mitigate the cross-chain infrastructure between Beacon Chain and Smart Chain so that the cross-chain can be re-enabled back. It is a hard fork release for both testnet and mainnet”.

Dubbed Moran, the hard fork will happen at the block height of 22,107,423 with a tentative scheduled date of October 12, 8:00 am UTC. The key changes will include fixing the vulnerability in the iavl hash check. It will also include introducing the block header in the sequence check in CrossChain contract.

Although the hard fork doesn’t affect regular users, node operators might have to follow certain steps. This includes stopping the actual node if it is still running and replacing it with a new binary. The latest hard fork will seek to improve the Binance Smart Chain.

It is a permanent diversion from the blockchain’s most recent version which will lead to a separation of the chain. Since some nodes no longer meet the consensus, the two versions of the network will run separately. As a result, one path keeps following the current set of rules while the second path follows a new set of rules.

The $100 Million Exploit

Last week, the Binance Smart Chian was temporarily halted after the hacker exploited a cross-bridge connecting BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Chain (BEP20 or BSC).

Binance Smart Chain says the attacker might have intended to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto. However, BNB’s fast decision to halt the chain was enough to stop the attackers in their track and limit the damage.

Cross-chain bridge hacks have been quite common this year with protocols losing hundreds of millions of dollars. In this case, Binance stated that they will be compensating for the funds lost. It noted that “in all likelihood, Binance will cover any fund that the hackers get away with”.