Major crypto exchange Coinbase has stopped bitcoin SV (BSV) trading following the latest in a string of attacks on the network.
“Due to the 51% attack that has occurred on BSV today we are stopping all BSV trading,” the exchange announced on Tuesday.
Bitcoin SV suffered a 51% attack on Tuesday morning, when “some serious hashing power was unleashed on the network,” according to Lucas Nuzzi, network data product manager at crypto intelligence firm Coin Metrics.
Nuzzi said that there had been an attempted attack first, followed by a successful one, during which “over a dozen blocks are being reorgd & up to 3 versions of the chain being mined simultaneously across pools.”
Coin Metrics further confirmed this, saying that the firm’s own blockchain security monitoring tool FARUM identified the attack. “All of our FARUM nodes witnessed a deep reorg with a max depth of 14 blocks,” they said. “No further reorganization events have been witnessed, but there are still synchronization conflicts taking place on major mining pools.”
The Bitcoin Association, an organization focused on Bitcoin SV, said that they are aware of the attack, and that the miners are actively responding to the situation. They’ve also recommended that node operators mark the fraudulent chain as invalid.
“This will immediately return your node to the chain supported by honest miners and lock the attacker’s chain out,” they said.
However, the network is reportedly still suffering issues.
These newer reorgs are disappearing faster from explorers (either being blacklisted or re-reorged); I've given up on tracking them. The BSV chain is still split. TAAL has abandoned Nakamoto consensus and confirmations are currently useless. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/j3Rk3eO5lM
— WizSec Bitcoin Research (@wizsecurity) August 4, 2021
Bitcoin SV had already seen four attacks in late June and early July. The attack involved block reorganisation, where a chain of competing blocks is created in parallel with the correct chain, per the Bitcoin Association.
It’s unclear whether this latest one is done by the same attacker, described by the organization as “an unknown miner operating (as an apparent impersonator) under the ‘Zulupool’ moniker.”
The 46th coin by market capitalization dropped 5.5% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at USD 134 (at 7:44 UTC). It’s up less than 1% in a week and down 11% in a month. Overall, the past year has turned red for the coin, depreciating over 40% in that time.
It had hit its all-time high of nearly USD 490 in mid-April, dropping 73% since.
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Source: Cryptonews
