The PoW cryptocurrency Firo (Proof-of-Work) announced that the protocol had been attacked 51% and notified its holders to stop transactions. Formerly known as Zcoin, the privacy coin was reportedly the subject of a blockchain reorganization attack.
The Firo team has made it clear that the attack cannot be attributed to a ‘coding bug’.
According to a series of tweets posted by Firo, the attacker broke protocol on Jan. 19 and is working to restore operations. However, the Firo team made it clear that the 51% mining attack was not the result of a “coding bug” [the] Nature of PoW. “
One of the first reports of the attack came from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who said:
XZC (FIRO) 51% attack, 306 blocks reset, until 2021-01-18 17:24:20 (UTC). Another messy situation.
At the time the attack was published, Firo posted a tweet saying:
We are currently working with exchanges and pools. Chain locks that would have prevented this from happening were tested on testnet and were weeks prior to deployment.
The Firo team’s Telegram group posted some updates on the incident. Some of the posts revealed that the attacker confirmed transactions “orphaned” as of January 18.
As a precautionary measure to resolve the incident, Firo released a hotfix wallet on January 21st asking users to update their wallets and master nodes. At the time of going to press, the team announced that the attack has been halted.
According to data from Markets.Bitcoin.com, Zcoin (XZC) is trading at $ 4.2568, down -16.51% from Jan. 21. However, it remains positive on an annual basis.
Recent incidents related to cryptos for proof of work
The most recent attack on a cryptocurrency to prove work dates back to November 2020. Grin, another privacy coin that suffered a 51% attack on their blockchain network. The Grin team built their token on the Mimblewimble protocol.
On February 17, 2020, Zcoin (now Firo) reported that a typo made an attacker a profit of around $ 400,000 at the time. They explained how the incident happened:
A typo on a single additional character in the code allowed an attacker to create Zerocoin issuance transactions without corresponding coinage.
What do you think of Zcoin’s 51% mining attack? Let us know in the comments below.
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