Ethereum Classic Faces New Challenges

New Year brings bring new challenges to the crypto community. Adding to the list of network hacks, an unknown Ethereum Classic miner decided to take the network on a ride, when the miner suddenly infused a ton of hashing power. This attempt was to gain majority control over the network, also called a 51% attack. 

A 51% attack is resource eating attempt at gaining power on a consensus-based network, essentially misusing the ‘longest chain wins’ protocol to induce malicious and unverified data. This problem is also termed as the double-spend problem, wherein transactions contradicting the history are added to the blockchain. 

The Ethereum Classic’s Twitter handles announced that it might be under a ‘possible deep chain reorganization attack’, restricting the network's ability. Most blocks mined after the majority were empty, to accumulate the ETC block rewards rapidly until a formidable attack plan has been implemented.  

Coinbase, taking note of some malicious activity on the network days before anyone noticed, made immediate strategic decisions to suspend all ETC trading activity. Supposedly some $80,000 worth of ETC were attempted to be double spent, meaning that the miner added malicious transactions to the blockchain to accumulate ETC from various other accounts. 

This puts a question on the robustness and security of not just the ETC network, but cryptocurrencies in general, as attacks like these are increasing in frequency, last of which being the Bitcoin Gold attack.