2018-11-14 02:29 |
A new statement by the founder of Cointext, Vin Armani, shocked the crypto community quite a bit. According to him, Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre are making plans to take over Bitcoin Cash (BCH) by using a 51% attack. After doing so, their supposed plan is to do the same on other cryptocurrencies.
According to Armani, who has been a BCH and BTC supporter for quite some time now, the plan to use 51% attack should not be taken as a bluff.
In his statement, he pointed out that November 15th is the date when BCH will have a hard fork, and Bitcoin SV (BSV) is expected to split off of it. Transactions will be valid on both of these networks, which is something that several large exchanges have already confirmed.
The attack strategyImmediately after the split, Coingeek and nChain are supposedly planning to launch a sustained 51% attack by using mining rigs for mining the opposing chain. While they will likely be mining empty blocks, they will be able to get a hold of the majority of the network and take control over it.
Armani further expressed his belief that Wright might even have additional attacks planned, some of which may have never been even considered before. As a result of the attack, Bitcoin ABC is expected to end up in a state of disarray, which will cause exchanges and apps to lose confidence in the BCH network. That way, their only choice would be to go for BSV nodes.
nChain's and Coingeek's allies will allegedly also start a transaction spam attack, which will additionally magnify the confusion on November 17th. Millions of small transactions will appear thanks to a tool called “Satoshi's shotgun”, which was created for a purpose such as this.
Big exchanges like Coinbase already announced that deposits and withdrawals will be disabled due to the fork. Thanks to the chaos caused by the attack, they will be unable to return them until BCH network stabilizes. This is exactly why Coingeek and nChain plan to keep the network unstable, which will cause investors to get rid of their BCH, according to Armani.
Furthermore, Armani claims that nChain and Coingeek do not mind suffering a reduction of their own wealth, in order to achieve their goal. In the end, if the attackers are successful, they will be in charge of Bitcoin Cash and its future development. All of the coins that get mined during the attack will belong to them, and this success will show that an offense attack can work against the Bitcoin network.
After this, Armani believes that that the attackers will continue to attack PoW blockchains. Coingeek already has a deal for obtaining Samsung-made ASICS mining chips, and as soon as they gather enough power and mining gear, they will likely go after other sha256 networks, especially Factom and Namecoin. Their first goal will be to absorb fractured parts of BCH community and then to move on to targets such as Dash, Litecoin, and Zcash.
Finally, their ultimate goal will be Bitcoin network itself, which they will bring down after gaining enough power and absorbing the leftovers of other networks.
Is the attack a real threat?Cryptonize's Ari Kuqi recently launched Sharkpool which claims that all altcoins, including forks, are nothing more than acts of war against Bitcoin. This is why Sharkpool miner will mine all empty blocks on altcoin networks, and sell all the profits for obtaining Bitcoin. By Bitcoin, it is believed that they mean Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. In a way, the plan is to destroy every altcoin-owned PoW blockchain out there.
The plan of attack that Armani has described is likely correct. However, it still remains to be seen whether or not it will actually work as planned. Defending Ethereum would likely be pretty simple. However, BCH chains that will appear on November 15th have no real protection as far as anyone can tell right now.
While it is unclear what kind of test November 17th will bring, it is expected that exchanges and businesses will likely delist BSV as soon as it starts looking like a threat. in addition, if Bitcoin Cash miners do not repel the 51% attack, it is likely that PoW will have to be changed.
While the plan that Vin Armani described can work in theory, it is still deemed unlikely that it will work that well in practice. Experts do not even believe that attackers can overpower supporting miners, to begin with.
Instead of a serious attack that will damage the space, most believe that the next few days will likely only bring another crypto show. Still, the event is only two days away now, and it would probably be wise for supporting miners to be prepared for this scenario as well, just in case.
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