Solana’s Co-Founder Praises Cardano’s Network Design Structure
Cardano’s recent network recovery generated cross-ecosystem recognition, with Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly praising the protocol’s resilience. Yakovenko called the event “pretty cool,” noting...
Cardano’s recent network recovery generated cross-ecosystem recognition, with Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly praising the protocol’s resilience.
Yakovenko called the event “pretty cool,” noting that building Nakamoto-style consensus without proof-of-work is extremely hard and arguing that Cardano’s protocol “functioned as designed in the presence of bugs.”
The Solana co-founder was responding to a detailed technical recap from Cardano developer Berry Ales, who explained how the network briefly diverged into two chains after a malformed transaction interacted differently with two node versions.
Based on his estimates, 30–40% of operators were running node A, which rejected the malformed transaction, while 60–70% were running node B, which accepted it.
Once the invalid transaction entered the mempool, node A operators formed a minority fork that progressed slowly because it controlled less stake. Node B operators advanced a majority chain more quickly, creating the type of divergence that typically forces nodes to follow the longest chain in a Nakamoto system.
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However, because the majority chain violated its ledger rules, node A operators refused to switch, even as their fork lagged behind.
The turning point came as stake pool operators began upgrading to the correct node version. As more stake migrated to node A’s fork, it eventually crossed the 51% threshold, allowing it to accelerate, catch up, and ultimately surpass the faulty chain.
The malformed transaction was removed, the majority fork dissolved, and the network preserved most of the history and progress made since the incident.
Berry Ales contrasted this outcome with how a BFT-style consensus chain, such as Solana, would respond under similar conditions.
In a 40/60 split, a BFT network would simply halt because fewer than 67% of nodes could agree on a block. In a 30/70 split, the malformed transaction would be finalised immediately, leaving the minority without a path to recovery unless they initiate a coordinated hard fork that would erase all progress made after the faulty block.
The Cardano developer concluded that bugs are inevitable, and a blockchain’s true test is its ability to recover; something Cardano’s design proved in this case.
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