Ethereum Classic (ETC) experienced a 51% attack from 9 p.m. Jan. 6 to just after midnight on Jan. 7, resulting in a blockchain reorganization hundreds of blocks deep. The news of the attack has pushed ETC’s price down by 7 %, shaving off $40 million off its market cap.
We can confirm that there was a successful 51% attack on the Ethereum Classic (#ETC) network with multiple 100+ block reorganization. We recommend all services to closely monitored the chain and significantly increase required confirmations.— Bitfly (@etherchain_org) January 7, 2019
ETC in trouble
Just last month, ETCDev shutdown their operations due to the price crash, leaving ETC vulnerable as it was the dev team’s job to maintain the main ETC client. While there is no obvious linkage between the primary dev team walking out and the 51% attack, it just that ETC appears to be standing on extremely murky waters.
An attack of this size is enough to ruin the reputation of any cryptocurrency as the users loses their confidence over the token’s immutability and security. Primary dev walking out around the same time is a further insult to injury.
Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork
Scheduled in about a week’s time, Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork is expected to slash the mining rewards from three Ether to two. In addition, the developers are considering including ProgPoW in the fork, which would block ASIC miners.
While it just speculation the attack is being blamed on the 1.4 GH/s ASIC ETHash rigs. Thus seemingly, the 51% attack on ETC might be employed as a justification to implement ProgPoW for both Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). Moreover, the users of both the protocols are demanding an immediate block of ASIC miners due to the same.
until #BTC #ETH #LTC #ETC go ASIC resistant by the numbers they are centralized— Big Red Machine ??? (@xrpizzle) January 7, 2019