Over the weekend we paused Phase II of the Community Testing Program. The reason was that we saw a small handful of users gaming the rewards system of the Hedera Portal website that has since been resolved; the ledger itself was not affected.

We estimate that a few hundred Hedera accounts were coordinated for this attack, owned by one or a small handful of individuals. This malicious behavior resulted in depositing 800,000+ hbars into the accounts in question.

While it is always disappointing to see this type of behavior, it is expected when testers can earn cryptocurrency to test any network. It is also likely that after open access, hackers will continue to try to attack.

Every cloud has a silver lining and we are happy to see the ledger is performing as expected, including for performance and reliability.

So...why not just roll back the transactions? It’s only community testing after all!

For those familiar with the space of cryptocurrency and decentralized networks, you likely realize it is not out of the ordinary for issues like this to occur. Often in these scenarios, the question by the community becomes ‘will the ledger roll back?’ Hedera’s answer is no.

The ledger is prevented at the code level from rolling back cryptocurrency transactions. Our current code does not allow us to freeze an account, nor to transfer hbars between accounts whose keys we don’t know. Meaning, if someone takes hbars from us, our software does not let us take them back.

What’s more, we are committed to never changing that. We are committed to maintaining the integrity of the cryptocurrency. Even if it means a loss for us.

Onwards to Open Access

(5/23 12:30pm ET) Update: Thank you for your patience; Phase II of the community testing program has resumed. Our only change is a 24 hour waiting period between submitting KYC information and its subsequent acceptance or rejection.

Currently, we anticipate being able to resume community testing in a few days, and we will notify everyone when we are back up and running. Today you are still able to create a profile in the portal, and to be able to go through the KYC process, which is administered by a third party.

We look forward to re-opening the Community Testing Program and to pushing it even further in the weeks to come when we open up for smart contract testing via the Star Map.

We are so grateful to you, our Hedera community for your support, effort, and patience during the early days, as we build the future.