Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) suffers 51% attack, resulting in thousands of transactions being invalidated and the emergence of three different versions of the blockchain
Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin SV BSV has been confirmed to have experienced a 51% attack by cryptocurrency research institutions Coin Metrics and SlowMist, with nearly 100 blocks being reorganized, and three versions of the chain running simultaneously.
A "51% attack" refers to when an attacker controls more than half of the total computing power of a blockchain in a short period of time, allowing them to retract, cancel specific transactions, and carry out double-spending attacks. For users, this means losing control of their token assets, leading to a gradual loss of credibility and ultimately resulting in failure.
Table of Contents
Bitcoin Cash Successfully Hit by 51% Attack
CoinMetrics member Lucas Nuzzi first discovered the attack, and their risk management platform FARUM identified a 51% attack. After an unsuccessful attempt yesterday, the attack succeeded in causing a 12-block reorganization last night, with over three versions of the blockchain running simultaneously.
CoinMetrics later pointed out that although the attack was successful only once, it still caused chaos in the mining pools, with over 14 blocks deep reorganized.
All of our FARUM nodes witnessed a deep reorg with a max depth of 14 blocks.
No further reorganization events have been witnessed, but there are still synchronization conflicts taking place on major mining pools. pic.twitter.com/aM6FoWOKke
— CoinMetrics.io (we're hiring!) (@coinmetrics) August 3, 2021
Additionally, Blockchair developer Nikita Zhavoronkov indicated that BSV actually experienced a 100-block deep reorganization, rendering nearly 570,000 transactions invalid over nearly 10 hours.
Association Calls for Node Updates
The Bitcoin Association, supporting Bitcoin Cash BSV, called on miners and node operators on Twitter to run new commands to invalidate the attacker's blockchain.
To invalidate the fraudulent chain, node operators should run the following command on their #BitcoinSV node:
bitcoin-cli invalidateblock 000000000000000003B67AEC95E9B5DA897EB5EBF3227D5A6A67835104367840
Please reach out on Twitter with any questions for the BA team.
2/2
— Bitcoin Association (@BitcoinAssn) August 3, 2021
However, the actions of the Bitcoin Association and the attack on BSV have faced harsh criticism from the Bitcoin community.
Is BSV Running its Blockchain on Twitter?
Shortly after being accused by Craig Wright of wrongfully publishing the Bitcoin whitepaper and being ordered by the court to pay Craig Wright's legal fees, Cobra, the person in charge of Bitcoin.org, seized the opportunity and went on the offensive.
He tweeted that BSV's consensus mechanism is PoSM, which stands for "proof-of-social-media":
The Bitcoin Association is now running the blockchain via Twitter. I suppose miners should regularly check tweets to maintain consensus among nodes? BSV is achieving higher throughput with its patented three-chain technology.
The community also noted that after the Bitcoin Association announced the new commands, the three chains currently coexisting in BSV are rushing to run the new commands to make the other two chains invalid.