[ANN][XCN] Cryptonite - NEW Thread | 1st mini-blockchain coin | Bounties!

[pallas]

meeeh this coins is just done...if u wanna safe coin algorit, its bether to start with new coin and new hipe P.
2many problems with this coin...trust is just lost...

I don't agree. XCN has unique features and is now more stable than ever. Plus, I find that the long history of the coin (almost 4 years) is a big plus, not a deficiency.
If you like pump and dump coins, which are abandoned after a couple months, then yes, you are better with another coin.

[pallas]

Dumped whole month of mining at least have to pay electricity burned

Sorry for your choice, you will miss the price increase which will inevitably happen when we get back into a bigger exchange like poloniex or bittrex.

[antantti]

The first example of the attack can be seen in this block: http://xcn-explorer.selektion21.de/?b=1007085

That block was mined late June, did this exploit have something to do with wallet problems during summer? I mean there were speculations about bad nodes and stuff like that?

About chinese exchanges, they are all going to close down. Not sure how many of those are going to have a new life somewhere else than in mainland china but it's safe to say that btc38 and bter are going to be closed soon.

[bitfreak!]

The first example of the attack can be seen in this block: http://xcn-explorer.selektion21.de/?b=1007085

That block was mined late June, did this exploit have something to do with wallet problems during summer? I mean there were speculations about bad nodes and stuff like that?

About chinese exchanges, they are all going to close down. Not sure how many of those are going to have a new life somewhere else than in mainland china but it's safe to say that btc38 and bter are going to be closed soon.

I cannot really remember what was happening at that time but I don't think there was any active development on Cryptonite in that period and the block explorer was down, which is probably why it went unnoticed. I doubt the exploit had anything to do with wallet problems, the wallet has always been fairly buggy until recently, but many of those stability issues have been solved over the last few months.

[antantti]

I cannot really remember what was happening at that time but I don't think there was any active development on Cryptonite in that period and the block explorer was down, which is probably why it went unnoticed. I doubt the exploit had anything to do with wallet problems, the wallet has always been fairly buggy until recently, but many of those stability issues have been solved over the last few months.

Ok, thanks bitfreak and pallas for solving this problem so fast, 260 millions may be gone but for every seller there is always a buyer too.

I hope in xcn's case code really is the law...

[pallas]

Maybe people will think that xcn is in a bad moment now.
But if you look from a different perspective you will see that this is probably not the case: the coin recently got many stability fixes and speedups, bitfreak is back to help me with coin development, we had external contributions to the code and new services, etc.
As soon as we sort out the exchanges situation together, things will look much better.
We value code and honesty of the people who work on the coin more than the current price. And, besides, price will go down and will go up again.
I think that the current price is not that much important: what really matters is the potential of the coin, what price it will be able to reach in the future.

[antantti]

Maybe people will think that xcn is in a bad moment now.

It is but who isn't?

One thing is for sure, there will be some good buying opportunities ;-)

Again, thanks pallas and bitfreak (and btc38 too for reporting this)!

From btc38 website: "warning：It's rather risky to trade crypto-currencies. Please invest by what you are able to afford."

[TheKingInYellow]

I wonder if this is an opportunity to buy. 

[_javi_]

I wonder if this is an opportunity to buy. 

that would be great (if we had an exchange) 

i hope the best to this coin and team.

Still hodling like a pro

[bogdanb]

I wonder if this is an opportunity to buy. 

that would be great (if we had an exchange) 

i hope the best to this coin and team.

Still hodling like a pro

We still have 3 exchanges: bx, nova and bter.
And bter is hong kong based, maybe will not be influenced by PBoC ban.
Bittrex or poloniex will be great, yobit can be a good start.
If @bitfreak! is back on the team, sky is the limit.

[chinaxcn]

Ok guys now the main pool and many exchanges have updated to the new version I feel it's safe to release more information about exactly what happened.

Unfortunately it looks like btc38 is going to remove XCN based on that announcement. Btc38 were the ones who first realized something was wrong because they had a suspiciously high number of XCN in their exchange wallet. They notified us there was something wrong a few days ago and I coded up a blockchain analyzer to look for anything suspicious. I discovered that an attacker found a way to create transactions with outputs larger than the inputs, allowing the attacker to essentially create free coins. The first example of the attack can be seen in this block: http://xcn-explorer.selektion21.de/?b=1007085

They were able to generate a negative fee value because of an integer overflow bug, making it possible to have outputs larger than the input value. Obviously there were checks for integer overflows in place but some integers which should have been unsigned were left signed in the worst place possible, either intentionally or by simple mistake, by the original dev. It looks like the attacker spent most of the smaller outputs and left the massive outputs alone, the latest version should block those massive balances but I calculated they were able to get away with around 260 million XCN from the smaller outputs.

We gave btc38 and other exchanges a list of the addresses used by the attacker so they may have been able to freeze some of the attackers funds, based on my analysis it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of transactions stemming off from the bad transactions. I also want to make it clear this bug has nothing to do with the mini-blockchain technology, the bug in the code was pretty obvious and quite easy to fix just by making some signed integers unsigned. Look at the latest changes on pallas's github to see exactly what we did to prevent this happening again.

In a few days I will release the source code for an XCN blockchain analyzer that I made to find the issue, it should also be useful for building an explorer that works efficiently. I will also release the javascript code I wrote some time ago for creating raw transactions and signing them, which I used to make sure our fix worked and should also be useful for creating a web wallet. Hopefully we can move past this even without too much issue, I was hoping our quick fix would be enough for btc38 not to drop XCN but I cannot blame them for being spooked by this, especially with the new laws in China.

The following is a list of blocks where the exploit was detected:

1007085, 1009490, 1035837, 1044220, 1052967, 1073572, 1103770, 1119219, 1139944, 1171685, 1188258, 1232798, 1246249, 1255968, 1271558, 1274983, 1278864, 1279894, 1281781, 1284716, 1286093, 1288597, 1290084, 1291824, 1294633, 1297819, 1298379, 1300671, 1302547, 1320111, 1320830, 1322596, 1323220, 1350726, 1360510, 1363161, 1364581, 1366301, 1366351, 1367675, 1369704, 1371786, 1373205, 1375144, 1377644

I talked to pallas  had problems with xcn， but he did not believe it

How do you deal with these problems now?

[JasonSW]

meeeh this coins is just done...if u wanna safe coin algorit, its bether to start with new coin and new hipe P.
2many problems with this coin...trust is just lost...

I don't agree. XCN has unique features and is now more stable than ever. Plus, I find that the long history of the coin (almost 4 years) is a big plus, not a deficiency.
If you like pump and dump coins, which are abandoned after a couple months, then yes, you are better with another coin.

Well it's not about a statement people are free to go or stay with; it is more about how you listen people's comments.

When it sayed this is an obvious bug, I got astonished. Obviously this coin wasn't well looked after. The suggestion I'd give is how you can show your devotion to plans of development, rather than just marketing plans (don't talk Bittrex or Poloniex anymore pls until get it). Convince people how this coin is going to make improvements, and continue to improve the stability to make sure likability of "obvious" bugs are going to be reduced by orders. High-tech is great, but reliability is the first priority on top of anything else.

I recalled few pages back people were still saying sync issue; I might be wrong that has been years and that can make people think something not right. Just get it done if not.

[JasonSW]

...

I talked to pallas  had problems with xcn， but he did not believe it

How do you deal with these problems now?

This is ironic.

[Kenrich]

is xcn delist from btc38? i cannt find it .what's happen with xcn

[JasonSW]

I wonder if this is an opportunity to buy. 

that would be great (if we had an exchange) 

i hope the best to this coin and team.

Still hodling like a pro

We still have 3 exchanges: bx, nova and bter.
And bter is hong kong based, maybe will not be influenced by PBoC ban.
Bittrex or poloniex will be great, yobit can be a good start.
If @bitfreak! is back on the team, sky is the limit.

The Chinese trading pages of Bter will be surely shutdown, as it is dominated by a mainland company, there was already a public notice; whether or not the English trading pages is gonna down or they have channels to keep trading will see.

[bogdanb]

I wonder if this is an opportunity to buy. 

that would be great (if we had an exchange) 

i hope the best to this coin and team.

Still hodling like a pro

We still have 3 exchanges: bx, nova and bter.
And bter is hong kong based, maybe will not be influenced by PBoC ban.
Bittrex or poloniex will be great, yobit can be a good start.
If @bitfreak! is back on the team, sky is the limit.

The Chinese trading pages of Bter will be surely shutdown, as it is dominated by a mainland company, there was already a public notice; whether or not the English trading pages is gonna down or they have channels to keep trading will see.

Maxcloud Inc.  Copyright © 2017  Address: British Virgin Islands   Phone : + 86 400-007-0955   Bter.com is powered by Bter Dev Team
From bter page. It is not a mainland china company.

[xyj790204]

i will support bter because it list xcn .also i will always support xcn

[bitfreak!]

I talked to pallas  had problems with xcn， but he did not believe it

How do you deal with these problems now?

I am always in communication with pallas and we were not aware there was any serious issue until just recently when btc38 made us aware. There were bugs with the wallet but those issues were not linked to this attack.

[bitfreak!]

Well it's not about a statement people are free to go or stay with; it is more about how you listen people's comments.

When it sayed this is an obvious bug, I got astonished. Obviously this coin wasn't well looked after. The suggestion I'd give is how you can show your devotion to plans of development, rather than just marketing plans (don't talk Bittrex or Poloniex anymore pls until get it). Convince people how this coin is going to make improvements, and continue to improve the stability to make sure likability of "obvious" bugs are going to be reduced by orders. High-tech is great, but reliability is the first priority on top of anything else.

I recalled few pages back people were still saying sync issue; I might be wrong that has been years and that can make people think something not right. Just get it done if not.

As pallas said the bug is only obvious when you know what to look for, there is a lot of code and without knowing what to look for it's very hard to pick out bugs, especially when neither of us were the original dev for Cryptonite. I developed the idea for the mini-blockchain several years ago but my C++ skills were lacking at the time so I hired a dev to create Cryptonite. The work was very rushed and he was working alone so there was bound to be some problems in the code, although I'm still quite suspicious of the original dev because it seems like he should have noticed this bug. Obviously it's embarrassing because a bug like this should not have been there in the first place. However we are lucky the attacker didn't do more damage then they did because they easily could have.

[pallas]

meeeh this coins is just done...if u wanna safe coin algorit, its bether to start with new coin and new hipe P.
2many problems with this coin...trust is just lost...

I don't agree. XCN has unique features and is now more stable than ever. Plus, I find that the long history of the coin (almost 4 years) is a big plus, not a deficiency.
If you like pump and dump coins, which are abandoned after a couple months, then yes, you are better with another coin.

Well it's not about a statement people are free to go or stay with; it is more about how you listen people's comments.

When it sayed this is an obvious bug, I got astonished. Obviously this coin wasn't well looked after. The suggestion I'd give is how you can show your devotion to plans of development, rather than just marketing plans (don't talk Bittrex or Poloniex anymore pls until get it). Convince people how this coin is going to make improvements, and continue to improve the stability to make sure likability of "obvious" bugs are going to be reduced by orders. High-tech is great, but reliability is the first priority on top of anything else.

I recalled few pages back people were still saying sync issue; I might be wrong that has been years and that can make people think something not right. Just get it done if not.

"this coin wasn't well looked after" - "just marketing plans"
Me and bitfreak have been working on the code for months, during our free time (I have a full time job) and with nothing in return. This coin is not developed by full time professionals. Again I think that, despite the issues, it's a very successful coin, considering how long it survived and all the new technology that it contains. Just compare it to the 90% of coins out there: they are just copy and paste from another coin with minimal differences, abandoned by the devs after few months.

"continue to improve the stability"
That's what we've been doing the last few months, after I took the coin development and bitfreak came back.

"reliability is the first priority"
Hence why we focused on stability and fixes in general, instead of adding new features.

"people were still saying sync issue"
Since the last sync fixes, I don't recall any such issue been reported.