Bitcoin Forum

Ethereum Classic Blockchain Splits Due to Reorg by a Single Miner

On August 1, several figures associated with Ethereum Classic (ETC) took to Twitter to inform the community of issues with the ETC blockchain. Among the first was Ethereum Foundation member Hudson Jameson who stated that: “Exchanges need to pause deposits and withdrawals.”

The official Twitter page of ETC and James Wo, founder of Ethereum Classic Labs, both confirmed the issue. A Diagnosis report was soon released to explain what happened. Although the offending miner was identified, it was not clear if it was a deliberate attack on the network.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-classic-blockchain-splits-due-to-reorg-by-a-single-miner

Reorg needs 51% of hash rate but how could this single miner get 51% of ETC hash?
This is either a 51% attack from some large mining pools or a completely unidentified bug with the ETC and probably ETH blockchain.
They are also asking for stopping deposit and withdrawal while continue with mining the coin in current state.

I'm really curious if ETC takes over most of the mining power after ETH goes PoS. Then, such attacks will be simply inefficient. Or, on the other hand, that may cause some huge mining players to try to take over some smaller networks to perform shady transactions. 2020/2021 will be an interesting time...

This type of event generates a little doubt because how can this happen due to the level of experience of the developers and the project in general? Are all investors now subject to manipulation due to the project's lack of competence? Safety situations is crucial duty for a project and question is: How to trust ETC?

I keep ETC on my balance, expecting that it will also start its growth following the top altcoins. I probably need to close my orders on the exchange, because after such negative news on the coin, its price can fall very much. This is not the first time that ETC is under attack, but if the number of miners increases after the ETH update, the network security will increase.

Nice news, that's sarcasm, I didn't expect that from the ETC team, considering that I have a lot of ETCs, just wait and see what really happens

It is strange ETC after 51% attack pumps. Right now price is almost identical as yesterday. In crypto any publicity is good. Even bad one.

I was just wondering why livecoin's wallet was temporarily unavailable.

ETC is primed for a correction in both usd and btc value. This looks like a minor issue that is being solved properly nothing to be concerned and not enough fud to destabilize the price range it has maintained for so many months.

Perhaps, specially those ETH miners who doesn't want or at least don't have the 32 ETH for the staking.

It is very interesting that one offending miner can do all of this?


https://hackmd.io/@cUBb4hAvQciAEPoU2yfrzQ/Skd4X6MZw

I doubt the "lost access to the internet" scenario here, there's more to it and for me it looks like a deliberate attack on the network by this offending miner to create his on-chain for a 51% attack.

And this is the main reason why bitcoin remains on top, 6 confirmations as compare to Altcoin that you need like 100 and then there is the possibility that the network is not secure. This is not the first time that we heard this kind of malicious attacks.

@Febo - maybe because ETC doesn't have that much investors, that a negative news doesn't impact it as what we have seen. Or maybe we are already in a bull run so regardless of any news like this, it doesn't matter.

Exactly what's astonishing me, price didn't go down after news of 51% attack was announced. Or maybe most holders are bullish on ETC 🤔 I actually expected massive dump for ETC, reason why I closed my position upon seeing the bad news. We keep getting surprises in this space.

The miners need a break even profit for the hardware and the amount of electricity they burn to focus their mining activities to ETC, the problems with the coin continue with this day and i am not even following their developments for a long time as there is nothing noteworthy from the developers.
It is possible that smaller networks will be attacked and the following years will be interesting especially if we see an altcoin rally.

Seems that people's focus is in the current bull market. So the impact of this news is not so big deal.
It is like, this attack just go in passing and no one is really giving attention to it.
Or just because ETH is enjoying its position in the market and investors are not really worried about this.
But at least they resolved it fast and they identified the offending miner. 51% attack is quite large for one offending miner though.

Even binance thinks it was a 51% attack on the ETC network. I can't even imagine how a coin that is in top30 will be a victim of a 51% attack. If I am remembering it correctly then this was not the first time that ETC fell victim to 51% attack.

Are you sure it was attacked by single miner ? I know the coin network can be attacked with 51% hash rate by miner.
My question is, how did they manage to mine with such big hash rate ? Even with ASIC miners, a single person won't be able to do that.
Maybe it was an ASIC miner company who did that.  ???

The release of the actual Ethereum mainnet was in July 2016 after the original version was a victim of 51% attack in early 2015. That original version has also name changed from Ethereum (symbol ETH) to Ethereum classic (symbol ETC).
Another hack occured last year in the ETC mainnet and caused the lost of more than a million dollar when a single person was able to control over 60% of the mining power which gave him the ability to double spend. The hack was discovered and announced by Coinbase Dev team.