The recovery plan is complete.

Here's the current status on the Maiar DEX, and important next steps.
Challenges may inevitably come.
When they do, we focus all our energy to rise up, and push forward.

First, some simple things.
Building anything of value is hard.
Sometimes what you build breaks down.
Still, building is very much worth it.

Problems happen to the worst of builders.
They also happen to the best of builders.
Question is: can you rise up for the challenge?
Can you survive? Can you learn? Can you improve?

HOW IT STARTED

I am traveling. Outside the country.
Yesterday evening. It's 1am.
Reach the hotel, go through some updates, ready for bed.

It's 2am. Still ready for bed, and I receive a team call.
Suspicious activity detected on the Maiar DEX.
Interesting. Especially the timing.

So, we rapidly gather 3-5 key team members in a call to investigate.
Lucian and the team are here, and as we observe that there is clear evidence of things not working as intended, we weigh the necessity of initiating emergency protocol.

INITIATE EMERGENCY PROTOCOL

Next 30-60 min we wake up more of the team, to begin a closer investigation on the issue during the night.
The Maiar DEX behavior was technically problematic.
Sufficiently problematic to necessitate immediate temporary pause for safety reasons.

DISCOVERIES

So what did we discover?

A bug. Potentially critical.
Opening an exploit area that we simply had to address and mitigate immediately.
Not addressing this bug in a swift manner, could lead to some unexpected consequences.

ORDER OF PRIORITIES

So what's the order of priorities in an emergency situation?
For us, it's this:

• a. understand the problem, limit damage as fast a possible, and ensure safety
• b. define a solution and recovery plan
• c. execute solution and recovery plan; prepare to resume activities once problem is solved and plan is properly executed

WHAT NEXT ?

So what's the status now?

a) A bug was discovered and exploited.

But damage is stopped now, and funds safety is ensured.
This has been our primary focus.

RECOVERY & RESUME

b) A recovery plan means deep analysis on the bug, its implications and potential solution.

After an all nighter investigation with the team, this morning a new emergency mainnet upgrade was proposed and adopted.
This improved security and solved the bug.

Another mainnet upgrade was just proposed and adopted with the validator community 3 hours ago.
Further increasing security, and preparing the Elrond network for a more robust execution environment.

A further step of recovery ensures verification checks of all balances on the Maiar DEX & Bridge.
Most exploited funds have been either recovered in full, or will be covered by the Elrond Foundation
This means funds are safe, & all funds will be available in full at restart

QUESTIONS, SCHEDULE, NEXT STEPS

Q1: So what's the resume schedule for the Maiar DEX?

Depending on how testing goes, our aim is tomorrow.
New upgrades will be validated and tested in the first half of the day, so that in the evening we should be ready for the DEX restart.

Q2: So how will you handle EGLD arbitration at the start?

Our solution for the DEX restart setup will ensure that EGLD price enters a "safe mode resync" until its price is matching the Binance EGLD price.
Only after this sync is done, will swaps be open to the public.

Q3: Where is the technical problem description and solution dexcription? 

For security reasons, a full technical explanation will follow as soon as all solutions are implemented and functioning properly.

CONCLUSION

Today was hard, but there are better days ahead.
During tough times, a few things matter most.

Team effort. Community effort.
Timely response. Lucid evaluation. Focused effort.

The upgrade and recovery plans are ready.
Whatever comes, Elrond will move forward.
The night is almost done. A new day begins.

Olag ⚡

@olag

Founder of MultiversX Wiki

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