By gifting new assets to existing cryptocurrency users, so-called "airdrops" are proving explosive, enabling the sudden creation of massive amounts of value almost overnight. But as the method is perhaps being hastily adapted, unexpected hazards are beginning to emerge.
Planning to launch on April 30, monerov is one such example. Seeking to correct what it sees as an error in monero's value proposition, it aims to offer a variation on the software behind the 11th-largest cryptocurrency that alters the rate at which coins are created.
But there's a catch. While monerov activates like all forks (by copying another crypto's codebase), its design threatens to undermine one of the core privacy mechanisms of the protocol it's splitting from. In short, because of the way it impacts monero's privacy features, a single data leak could cause a chain reaction, one that potentially damages its future transactions.
Given the risks to the original blockchain, the idea has been met with an icy reception.
https://www.coindesk.com/airdrop-attack-coming-monero-fork-condemned-as-privacy-threat/
