A series of tweets from Guy Swann, the host of Cryptoconomy Podcast on May 24, claims that two miners have managed to execute a 51% attack on the bitcoin cash (BCH) blockchain.
A 51% attack is when the hacker can control a majority of mining power on the Proof-of-Work blockchain network, i.e. the majority block verifier could prevent other users from mining and reverse transactions. Though many may assume that such an attack is with malicious intent, this scenario seems to be different.
Reportedly, this 51% attack occurred when two mining pools were attempting to prevent an unidentified party from taking some coins that were essentially “up for grabs,” due to a code update.
As per Swann the two miners with majority control of the network are BTC.top and BTC.com. The duo’s attack was to stop that unknown miner from taking coins that were sent to an “anyone can spend” address following the original hard fork in May 2017. As per Swann’s tweets:
“When the unknown miner tried to take the coins themselves, http://BTC.TOP & http://BTC.COM saw & immediately decided to re-org & remove these [transactions] TXs, in favor of their own TXs, spending the same P2SH coins, + many others … So just 2 miners, in secret & w/ no trouble, took it upon themselves to remove 2 blocks w/ another’s TXs, & replace with their own.”
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Since the original split in 2017, there has been a significant number of coins accidentally sent to "anyone can spend" addresses (due to tx compatibility of sigs, but no #SegWit on #BCH), or possibly they've been replayed from #Bitcoin onto the #BCH network.— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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During the unintentional fork, someone exploited a bug (details are really hard to find) to add invalid TXs to @Bitcoin_ABC's client mempool.To counter, https://t.co/gZNf6P1G3l mined empty blocks (the bad TXs made blocks impossible to produce)https://t.co/VyDq1RpBOS
— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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In the confusion, an unknown miner (possibly the attacker, but unconfirmed) tried to snatch a bunch of P2SH/#Segwit coins. But https://t.co/gZNf6P1G3l & https://t.co/h08wTM6XgZ were expecting, and/or preparing to recover SegWit coins themselves…https://t.co/jNzqgOh4km— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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When the unknown miner tried to take the coins themselves, https://t.co/gZNf6P1G3l & https://t.co/h08wTM6XgZ saw & immediately decided to re-org & remove these TXs, in favor of their own TXs, spending the same P2SH coins, + many others.https://t.co/jNzqgOh4km— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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So just 2 miners, in secret & w/ no trouble, took it upon themselves to remove 2 blocks w/ another’s TXs, & replace with their own.Bizarrely, some are celebrating!
Some devs are quiet, but jtoomim (#BCH dev) called it “justice,” & “punishment” for “antisocial behavior.” pic.twitter.com/ntiaV21YBG
— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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This is what everyone warned about of endless HFs. Its an attack vector, kills Lindy effect, & has turned #BCH into a political mess where private comms control what does/doesn't get in a block.I can’t tell if no one cares, or if they just want to ignore it? ?
— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
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Very curious to see others who could dig further (& more thoroughly) into this, as details are not easy to find, & there seem to no articles about the 51% as far as I can tell. ?/fin@nic__carter @DZack23 @MessariCrypto @BitMEXResearch @jimmysong @AaronvanW @TuurDemeester
— Guy Swann ??| Activate Covenants (@TheGuySwann) May 24, 2019
Often 51% attacks are considered as an undesirable and unprofitable option to take funds as it requires a massive amount of computing power. Moreover, once a network is considered compromised, users would ostensibly flee. According to Coin.Dance statistics, BTC.top and BTC.com control 43% of the bitcoin cash mining pool.
In January this year, the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain experienced a 51% attack. Gate.io, the crypto exchange reportedly after the attack that the attacker had reversed four transactions, resulting in a loss of 54,200 ETC. The exchange promised to compensate the affected users and further advised other trading platforms to block transactions initiated by the attacker’s address.
Read more:Swiss Watchmaker Franck Muller Launches ‘Functional’ Bitcoin Timepiece
Image source – Pixabay.com
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