Cryptocurrency, News & Updates

Ethereum Classic Gamble to halt 51% Attacks

From July until August, Ethereum Classic has suffered three 51% attacks that might cost the attackers only $3,800 in their rented hash power.

Because of this, Ethereum Classic developers made the hash power more expensive.

Ethereum Classic Labs CEO Terry Culver explained on Monday what the ETC Labs and the ETC Core Development Teaming called a MESS or Modified Exponential Subjective Scoring.

“Nodes aren’t designed to distinguish between an attacker chain and an honest mining chain,” he stated. “What we’ve done is we’ve created a system by which large reorgs need to have greater difficulty.”

That was not the problem for the legitimate miners, but then it is impractical for the malicious actors who need to show “hash rates sustained over a longer period of time.” When MESS had been active over the summer, the attacks will have to cost $20 M instead of the resale value of a Toyota Corolla, as stated to an ETC Labs press release.

In the 51% attack, a bad actor will take control of most of the network’s hashing power. It can then make decisions concerning the system, like denying, reversing, or even modifying transactions. It became possible, and the to double-spend funds, which precisely what happened with ETC.

Culver acknowledged that a low hash rate is then currently a problem for the ETC blockchain. However, the cryptocurrency’s relatively high liquidity will create a perfect blizzard:

“So if you’re an attacker, and you see a combination of access to liquidity, a lot of exchange listings, and low hash rate, it’s a good target.”

Even though the ETC developers have taken steps to avert further attacks, ETC Labs has hired lawyers to pursue the perpetrators. Still, then it definitely won’t be rolling back the Ethereum Classic blockchain.

“We’re not pursuing criminal criminal charges as a way to change how blockchain works,” he said. “We’re pursuing criminal charges to deal with people who’ve done something quite simple and that’s been around since as long as civilization has been around, which is steal.”

Culver stated that the legal action needed to be taken to boost investors’ and users’ confidence. He also warned the other projects not to get complacent about security.

“To look at Ethereum Classic, and to say that you can’t have confidence in it because it was attacked, in a way it’s blaming the victim, I think it shows a complete misunderstanding of how these systems work,” he said.

“If you’re in Classic itself, it’s resilient, it’s got a lot of potential, and it’s got a bright future.”

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