zycrypto.com
It is quite hardy that the cryptocurrency community has been faced with a lot of threats in the previous years which seems to not have been abated following the report from one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, that ethereum classic (ETC) which is an ethereum hard fork had suffered a 51% attack.
The exchange was not affected as it acted promptly. According to Coinbase:
“On 1/5/2019, Coinbase detected a deep chain reorganization of the Ethereum Classic blockchain that included a double spend. In order to protect customer funds, we immediately paused movements of these funds on the ETC blockchain.” The exchange added that the attack is an ongoing one however they have also discovered a double spend worth 219,500 ETC($1.1 Million).
The exchange added:
Subsequent to this event, we detected 12 additional reorganizations that included double spends, totaling 219,500 ETC (~$1.1M)
It should be noted that a 51% attack is a term used in the cryptocurrency community, whereby an attacker could be able to control more than 50% of the hashrate of a coin, reorganizing the coin network and previous transactions, and then spend a lot of coins from the network against the background that double spend is not permitted through crypto exchanges.
Although, the Ethereum Classic team had given notice to cryptocurrency exchanges through a tweet that they should increase the confirmation time for withdraw and deposit in the coin which is the best option for exchanges to remain safe, even as they confirmed that Coinbase is yet to share findings with them.
To all exchanges and mining pools please allow a significantly higher confirmation time on withdrawals and deposits (+400)
cc @OKEx @ExchangeXGroup @HuobiGroup @digifinex @binance @bitfinex https://t.co/m5cxcKBVXa
— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) January 7, 2019
“To all exchanges and mining pools please allow a significantly higher confirmation time on withdrawals and deposits (+400).” At the time of writing, ETC is trading at $5.03 with a market capitalization of $540 million and at the 18th position.