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Vertcoin is a less known project, but is becoming more familiar for all the wrong reasons. You may not know this by looking at price action, but Vertcoin (VTC) is currently under attack for 51%, with a wave of reorg and double-spending activities currently underway.
Mark Nesbitt, Coinbase's Security Engineer, has posted a blog post on an ongoing survey in about two dozen "Deep chain reorganizations" in Vertcoin, more than half of which included "Double expense of VTC" worth more than $ 100,000. The chain reorganizations are similar to the blockchain version of alternative timelines you see in superhero movies, only in real life, nobody saves the day. The biggest reorg has had one "Depth of 307 blocks and a length of 310 blocks."
Vertcoin is not the first cryptocurrency to suffer a 51% attack and probably will not be the last. Bitcoin Gold and Verge suffered similar attacks this year, exposing the vulnerabilities in the Nakamoto consensus algorithm.
As for Vertcoin, Nesbitt outlines four separate attacks, the most recent of which began on 29 November and continues today. The accident consists of four reorgs and the double spent were part of all of them.
Some in the VTC community have been quick to blame the developers, the volunteers who are feverishly trying to solve the problem with an impending fork difficult and wanting to eliminate the chartered hash power and the mining powered by ASIC on the network. The Vertcoin developers are not aware of it "guilty" or "victim."
Some people have complained that we did not say anything about the 51% attack. Well, some of us have worked on the solution. The rest of our team was taking time to create an answer to help educate the public about such attacks. The following is the answer. $ VTC #Vertcoin https://t.co/QaQZibBmXv
– Canen (@ Canen01) December 4, 2018
A lot of guilt for going around
The Nesbitt of Coinbase, meanwhile, went to the jugular, linking the ASIC resistance to the security of a cryptocurrency like Vertcoin. But as Satoshi Nakamoto stated in the white paper: "The system is safe as long as possible honest knots they collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacking nodes. " Nesbitt pointed to the ASIC resistant nature of Vertcoin:
While a full exploration of ASIC resistance is out of the scope of this article, the above observations strongly suggest that the pursuit of ASIC resistance in a currency is counterproductive to the security of the currency.
Vertcoin is a project resistant to the ASIC, but according to one of the VTC developers "It is extracted with public ASICs now" that the team intends to fight with an impending gallows called Lyra2REv3.
Vertcoin developer Eric Kubik does not agree with Nesbitt's characterization of the facts, saying rather than "ASIC Resistance" the problem is related to NiceHash, which if true is all but beautiful for the project. NiceHash is a Slovenian market for buying and selling hash power.
The Reddit community was quick to blame the ASICs, suggesting that the ASIC-resistant project would have to remove the hash power fed by ASIC. Meanwhile, Vertcoin shares software developers with the MIT-DCI Lit Lightning Network, including Gert-Jaap Glasbergen, who explained on social media:
This is not caused by ASICs but by Nicehash. There is too much hashrate to rent at a price too low that leads to zero capex and low ope to make attacks.
The Vertcoin developers are close to the launch of the fork, designed for "Temporarily stop mining outsourcing". The developers argue that while ASICs can strengthen Bitcoin network security, they have the opposite effect on smaller networks like Vertcoin.
The team is exhausted and says so "They will NOT be compromised on decentralization by implementing centralized controls and … we will not give up fighting ASICS". In the meantime, they are urging investors to do so "Protect yourself from double expenses".
Vertcoin recently dedicated a podcast to a website that alleges the cost of a 51% PoW attack including VTC, which may have placed a target on the back of the coin.
The author is not invested in any digital currency mentioned in this article but is invested in other cryptocurrencies.
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