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The Bitcoin Cash network hard forks every six months to ensure it's up to date with security and to implement any new features. The latest upgrade has now been completed, but reports of problems in the network have begun surfacing.
BitMEX Research had been covering the update, reporting that everything was going according to plan. At least it was until a few hours ago. According to the tweet, the number of transactions per block is low, with some even hitting 0, whereas BitMEX’s mempool has 1622 transactions.
It appears as if there may be a problem with the Bitcoin Cash hardfork upgrade, the number of txs per block is low (0 in the last 9 blocks, other than the coinbase txn). Our mempool has 1622 txs
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) May 15, 2019
Below chart is number of txs per block and the orange line is the hardfork point pic.twitter.com/UR3jQuN6Zm
Cornell professor and founder of AVA Labs, Emin Gün Sirer provided some clarification on the problem. He notes Bitcoin Cash was attacked due to an old bug in block template creation. The attack resulted in empty blocks for a while, but otherwise had minimal effect.
BCH came under attack today, due to an old bug in block template creation. Attack led to empty blocks for a short while, until patched, otherwise had little effect.
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) May 15, 2019
He goes on to say that someone had been sitting on that bug for months, choosing to exploit it during a scheduled upgrade. While he describes the move as juvenile, it also serves as a “great reminder that this is a space with byzantine actors.”
Someone spent months sitting on this bug and chose to exploit it during a scheduled upgrade. It's pretty juvenile, but also, a great reminder that this is a space with byzantine actors, and we must pay close attention to software correctness.
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) May 15, 2019
As a result of this attack, cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex announced that deposits and withdrawals for BCHABC have been disabled until further notice. BCH core developers are currently dealing with the problem, Poloniex stated.
BCH had an issue with the planned hard fork scheduled for today. As a result, we have disabled deposits and withdrawals for BCHABC until further notice. BCH core developers are working on it. Thank you for your patience.
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) May 15, 2019