Hash War: Mystery Miner’s Empty Block Attack makes ABC’s new blockchain nearly unusable

According to various reports, Bitcoin ABC’s pro-VET chain was “attacked” for several consecutive days. The mystery miner mined a large number of sequential blocks, but almost all of them were empty. The miner who goes by the name of “Voluntarism.dev” says the mining operation is a group of “old guard miners” and says they can interfere with the ABC minority chain for years.

‘The price of freedom is steep’

The cryptocurrency community has observed the consequences of the recent blockchain fork, which saw Bitcoin’s ABC node fork into its own blockchain. The Bitcoin ABC network is still unnamed and unbranded and the token is often referred to as “ABC”, “BCHA” or “BAB”.

Last week, news.Bitcoin.com reported on a stealth miner mining a large number of consecutive empty blocks. Because the blocks have been empty for so long, it was difficult for anyone to send a transaction on the ABC chain and get the transaction confirmed in a timely manner.

From our editorial report, the mystery miner introduced the group to Twitter with the account name Voluntarism.dev, and through the coinbase parameter messages whenever the pool finds an ABC block reward. On November 24, 2020, Voluntarism.dev’s Twitter account created a message with a blockchain signature to verify its legitimacy.

On the same day the miner tweeted: “good ideas don’t require strength” and the next day the group tweeted a message to other miners pointing to hashrate to the ABC chain. Voluntarism.dev said:

Hope all miners agree – we would like 100% of the BCHA coinbase reward to go to pqnqv9lt7e5vjyp0w88zf2af0l92l8rxdgnlxww9j9.

Later that day, the pool tweeted that “the price of freedom is high” and also tweeted some screenshots from the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC. Amaury Séchet discuss the infrastructure financing plan (IFP).

“ABC violated the NAP (principle of non-aggression) with 9 months of civil war,” Voluntarism.dev’s Twitter account pointed out in another tweet. “Freeriders have to pay 100% of the block reward to ABC. We will orphan any blocks that don’t. We will also pay 100% once ABC merges this change, “the pool added.

In another statement Voluntarism.dev said:

The amount of value he stole ABC from [Bitcoin Cash] pales in comparison to our expenses. We are a group of miners and old guard whales. We can do this for years. Next time you fork: use your genesis block, your PoW [algorithm]and build your community. [Bitcoin Cash] is protected.

Meanwhile, between Thursday and Saturday, it took more than 24 hours for the pro-IFP ABC transactions to be canceled and the blockchain has undergone a total of two blockchain reorganizations (reorgs) to date. This means that after a block has been mined by a miner other than Voluntarism.dev, it has been reset and once confirmed the blocks simply disappear. On Saturday morning, there was an attempt to reorganize the ABC chain for a third time, but it was reinstated by the Dutch Mining pool. Mining Dutch mining pool managed to process thousands of transactions for senders on Saturday early afternoon (EST).

@yhaiyang idea for you. download your BCHA holdings into your customers’ purchase walls, then make them worth $ 0 (according to your risk warning) https://t.co/ZFHg17KDZz pic.twitter.com/dVFy4m4rWG

– voluntarism.dev (@DevVoluntarism) November 27, 2020

Does it generate an attack on the field or a forced consent mechanism?

On November 28, 2020, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted about the mysterious mining pool that now controls 90% of the ABC chain’s hashpower. ” [A] mining pool 51% attacks BCHA apparently with the explicit aim of destroying it. Will this be the first true spawn camp attack on a PoW chain? “Buterin asked his followers on Twitter.

However, the recent empty block attack is not the first true spawn camp attack on a PoW chain. A Bitcoin clone called Coiledcoin appeared in 2012 and it was said that it was also attacked by the hashrate. The BTC community has accused Core developer Luke Dash Jr. of exploiting the Eligius mining pool in order to remove the Coiledcoin project. Software developer Peter Todd spoke about the event on Twitter in 2016 when Ethereum Classic (ETC) was threatened with a 51% attack.

On Friday, in a response to Buterin’s tweet about the mysterious miner, BCH supporter and researcher, Javier Gonzalez explained that the mining pool technique was not an attack. “It’s not an attack, it’s defensive”, González She said. “Bitcoin ABC broke the BCH project to capture 8% incentive for coinbase miners. 90% of the BCH [hashpower] voted against. And now they are defending their interests. Forced consent mechanism “, insisted González.

News.Bitcoin.com spoke with González on Saturday, as the third attempt at the blockchain reorg took place. González is also the inventor of the Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP), a concept that tackles the problems of the Bitcoin Cash network using Nakamoto Consensus.

During the morning hours (EST), the Viabtc and Mining Dutch mining pools mined blocks 662396 and 662397. Both of these blocks confirmed thousands of transactions, but once again Voluntarism.dev reorganized the chain with its enormous hash power and blocks have disappeared. González gets the data from the Blockchair block explorer and also manages his own ABC pro-IFP node. Although not long after, the conflicting hashpower was able to stop Voluntarism.dev’s third reorg attempt.

“The first empty block + reorg attack to destroy a minority division attempt (BAB / BCHA / ABC) is underway,” González told news.Bitcoin.com on Saturday. “I think they are a group of BCH miners and whales who are acting in coordination to defend the [Bitcoin Cash] blockchain from the split caused by Bitcoin ABC (Amaury) to capture 8% of the coinbase incentive that belongs to miners. González further added:

After all, Amaury believes he has the right to break the project and take 8% (who knows how much in the future). But this is denied by hashwar.

Reorg ABC’s third attempt at Mystery Miner ran into confrontation power

González also claimed that the ABC chain has only two mitigations; selectively ignore hashpower (total centrality) or modify the algorithm in an emergency. The researcher also pointed out that the ABC chain is of no use and that markets may have to remove the coin from the list. As the mysterious miner clears the blocks, he also optimizes the assault by making detailed González cheaper.

“What we are seeing is what I call ‘executive mining’. That is, it is not ‘automatic mining’ that follows the market incentive, but miners are following their brains, spending money, thinking of a bigger future incentive (in this case, it seems to be the defense of BCH) ” , González pointed out.

While conversing with the researcher, two more blocks were pulled out of the Dutch Mining Pool. González said that the mysterious miner Voluntarism.dev is now facing the hashish war. “A large amount of hashrate reversed the reorg, protecting BAB,” González explained. Currently, there have been two successful reorganizations and one failed attempt on Saturday morning.

After the two blocks were found by Mining Dutch, Voluntarism.dev mined four blocks after which, the pool said the conflicting hashpower was a “bully” in the following coinbase message. After the four blocks extracted from Voluntarism.dev (662412, 662413, 662414, 662415), Mining Dutch got two more blocks and was able to process the transactions.

Starting now, BCH supporters and ABC supporters will look at the chain with open eyes. So far, it appears that the chain is far from functional and the existence of the network in the future is uncertain.

What do you think about the hashish war and the mystery miner? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Charts by Javier González, Coin Dance Cash ABC hashrate distribution,