Core DAO disclosed that a validator reward anomaly caused some validators to receive more CORE than the protocol intended, prompting Coinbase and LBank to restrict certain CORE transfers while the network prepared an emergency hard fork to deploy a fix. The team said it had identified the root cause and was coordinating the patch with validators and exchanges, though it did not immediately disclose the amount of excess CORE, the validators or reward rounds involved, or the precise technical cause. Core DAO stated user assets were safe and that network security and custody were unaffected.
According to Core's incident timeline, Coinbase opened its Core DAO investigation at 04:41 UTC on Aug. 31 and later paused CORE sends and receives, while buys, sells, conversions and fiat transactions remained unaffected. LBank separately suspended CORE deposits at 05:00 UTC, citing project requirements, without announcing a withdrawal or trading suspension or a restoration time. Core's reward documentation says validator compensation combines newly minted CORE block rewards with transaction fees, with 90% of rewards going to validators and their delegators and 10% to the System Reward Contract. The project's tokenomics describe a fixed supply of 2.1 billion CORE, including 839.9 million allocated to node mining over 81 years.
The exchange actions left the relationship between the reward anomaly and the transfer restrictions officially unconfirmed, and unresolved questions included whether affected rewards could be clawed back, burned, or offset by reducing future emissions. Core DAO promised a postmortem after the issue is contained. The emergency hard fork is expected to be seamless for ordinary CORE holders once exchanges confirm the upgrade is stable, but users were advised to follow official channels and avoid uncertain transactions during the transition window.
