aelf outage wipes a week of staking rewards after shutdown

aelf experienced a seven-day outage that stopped block production and eliminated network staking rewards for that period. Public nodes, an explorer and multiple user-facing services were brought back online, while exchange deposit and withdrawal access differs by venue. A full post-incident review remains outstanding.

The incident followed malicious smart-contract activity that led to a controlled shutdown. In a Sept. 14 recovery update, aelf reported that public nodes and its aelfscan explorer were reachable and that frontends for FairyVault transfers, Awaken trading, Forest NFT browsing and the TMRW DAO staking interface were accessible. MainChain and tDVV status endpoints showed advancing block heights after the restart. Those checks did not include end-to-end transaction submissions or transfer tests.

The block-production pause lasted roughly one week. aelf confirmed that no network staking rewards were generated during that interval, and the restored TMRW DAO interface does not make rewards from the halted period available for distribution or claim.

Exchange-level access varied as platforms resumed services on different schedules. Bithumb scheduled ELF deposits and withdrawals to restart on Sept. 14 at 14:00 KST. MEXC set a resumption date earlier and instructed users to generate new deposit addresses because prior addresses were invalid. INDODAX’s Sept. 2 notice continued to list ELF wallet deposits and withdrawals as closed. aelf cautioned that exchange announcements provide venue schedules but do not guarantee account-level availability for every user.

In an Aug. 26 incident update, aelf’s investigators identified 155 transactions linked to the malicious activity: 127 on the AELF MainChain and 28 on the tDVV dAppChain. The review found five distinct .NET assemblies with capabilities to interact with host systems and node-related keys and configuration, raising concerns about possible exposure of infrastructure and node credentials beyond the smart contracts themselves. aelf noted that the presence of those capabilities did not prove every payload executed or that all targeted credentials were obtained.

As of Aug. 26, the project’s evidence review reported no unauthorized transfers of ordinary users’ assets and no exposure of ordinary-user wallet keys. That assessment excluded unresolved questions about node and infrastructure credentials. aelf indicated that a final technical appendix, a full post-incident review and a root-cause assessment remain unpublished and will be released after remaining work, including an independent review, is complete.

aelf urged users to verify exchange-specific notices before moving funds and to follow any exchange instructions, such as generating new deposit addresses where required.