Owing to the sophisticated design of the MCX Now transaction system the website was able to detect the attack and shut off in defense.
I find this funny. Nice play on words to make it seems like MCXNOW did something to prevent this.
I suppose their shutdown played a major role in the discovery of the problem and the fix.
If this would have been a coin the values decentralization MCXNOW would be short 62,000 WDC and coinhunter left to fit the bill
But who cares about "Decentralized" these days right?
I think you're missing an important point here: the moment someone controls >50% of the network hashrate the coin
is effectively centralized.
Why do you think its such an issue if all you have to do is checkpoint a block and "rollback" the blockchain.
Congrats! WDC is no longer decentralized.
See above. Furthermore, decentralization doesn't mean lack of checkpoints. Everybody is free to use the old client and the double-spend leg of the blockchain. Only if the majority of users switch to the new client version the blockchain is effectively rolled back. But in that case everything is fine - the majority decides in a decentralized way.
I wonder which is greater. The total lost by legitimate miners due to the rollback. Or what coinhunter would have lost without it
This leads to interesting questions, indeed. What would have happened if only 6200 or 620 or 62 coins had been double spent? What if the ripped off entity hadn't been mcxNOW but only some nameless poor guy? What if the double spend had only been discovered several days later?
51% attacks have become a more or less regular reality, and the community needs to find a way to deal with this.