Pirate Chain Exploit Mints 39.8M Tokens, Team Proposes Network Rollback

A validation flaw linked to the recent Ironwood upgrade allowed an attacker to illicitly mint roughly 39.8M Pirate Chain tokens, creating 20% of the maximum supply out of thin air. The newly generated tokens were immediately transferred into the Sapling shielded pool, leveraging the network's mandatory zk-SNARKs cryptography to obscure their subsequent movement. In response, Pirate Chain developers have requested a voluntary pause on all user transactions and proposed a full blockchain rollback to revert the network state to 20:00 UTC on October 14. The crypto exchange NonKYC has already restricted deposits connected to the exploit and frozen withdrawals to prevent the counterfeit tokens from being converted into other assets. Developers confirmed that while the validation rules failed, there is currently no evidence indicating that the network's core zk-SNARKs cryptography or notary keys were compromised.