After the "European Ethereum" AE was attacked by 51%
Editor's Note: This article comes fromHoneycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing), Author: JX kin, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
, Author: JX kin, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
On December 30, the assets of two established projects, AE (Aeternity) and HC (HyperCash), will be delisted on Binance. On December 24, the reason for the delisting given by Binance’s announcement is that “when the token no longer meets the listing standards or there are major industry changes, Binance will conduct an in-depth project review and may delist it.”
At this stage, it coincides with the market growth period in which Bitcoin continuously broke new historical highs, and the total market value of AE and HC two asset projects have shrunk by 98% and 91% respectively from their previous historical highs, and both fell by more than 20% within the year.
Liu Shao of the AE Chinese community said that coins with small computing power under the PoW consensus are vulnerable to "51% attacks". Recently, both ETC and Grin have encountered this attack. "If the project side and the exchange fail to prevent it in time, the exchange that stores a large amount of assets may become a victim."
OKEx stated that the exchange cannot control the 51% attack, but the platform still bears the loss of AE being attacked by itself, and user assets will not be affected. In the near future, we will increase the review of related projects to prevent attacks from affecting the asset security of the trading platform.
Both AE and HC were star projects in the last bull market period of encrypted assets. Before the bull market period of this year, the assets of DeFi and NFT sectors became traffic stars and new sources of centralized exchanges. In contrast, old-fashioned projects have not continued to develop in application scenarios, their assets have been retreating in the secondary market, and the motivation of the team to operate and maintain projects is getting smaller and smaller, which also leaves opportunities for attackers .
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On December 27th, the price of Bitcoin once again set a new historical record, breaking through 28,000 US dollars, driving the encrypted asset market into a long-term increase in market value.
This inevitably reminds people of the last bull market from 2017 to 2018, when Bitcoin flew with various assets. However, in this year's market, among the top ten market capitalization of "various assets", Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC), which used to be called "mainstream currencies", are still included. According to Alcoin data, the oracle project ChainLink (LINK) and cross-chain network Polkadot (DOT) in the DeFi sector also squeezed into the top ten market capitalization.
The old public chain EOS fell from the altar and ranked 16th. Some old-fashioned projects are still facing the crisis of being delisted by the exchange. On December 24, Binance officially announced that it will delist AE (Aeternity) and HC (HyperCash) on December 30. The reason for the delisting is that they no longer meet Binance’s listing standards.
Binance said that Binance will regularly review the encrypted assets on the line to ensure a high level of currency quality. When the token no longer meets the listing standards or there are major industry changes, it will conduct an in-depth project review. If necessary It will be taken down.
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Binance will delist AE and HC on December 30
HyperCash benchmarked against Bitcoin in 2018, and its asset HC was known as a new generation of decentralized, open source, cross-system digital cryptocurrency at the time.
One of the two projects is against Ethereum and the other is against Bitcoin, but neither of them has subverted their opponents. When the market is going well, AE and HC are like brothers and sisters, and the market performance can be called a disaster.
As of 9 a.m. on December 27, AE was temporarily reported at US$0.096, with a circulating market value of US$30.71 million, a decrease of 98% from the historical high of US$1.15 billion, and a decline of 26.3% this year. At the same time, HC was temporarily quoted at US$0.643, with a circulating market value of US$27.92 million, a decrease of 91% from the historical high of US$274 million, and a decrease of 41.5% within the year.
After Binance announced the delisting of AE, the project official did not disclose any information. The official Twitter of AE was last updated on November 28, when it was "celebrating the second anniversary of the AE creation block". In AE's telegram group, users are constantly saying "sell AE as soon as possible" and "don't have illusions".
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AE was affected by the "51% attack" exchange
The delisting of Binance may be related to the "51% attack" on AE on December 7. AE assets on many exchanges suffered losses due to this attack. However, in response to the attack, AE officials did not make a wide public response.
"51% attack" is also called double-spend attack. The blockchain network that adopts the proof-of-work PoW mechanism most often encounters this type of attack, that is, once a person or entity controls more than 51% of the mining power in the network, He can independently overcome the remaining computing power, realize reorganization or roll back the blockchain, and the result is that "a sum of money can be spent twice".
If the assets on a certain blockchain chain have been listed by the exchange, once the attacker transfers the pseudo-assets on the “reorganized chain” to the exchange for trading without attracting the attention of the exchange, other assets can be cashed out for profit. After AE was attacked this time, some exchanges were indeed affected.
"The attackers are skilled in operations and have spent a lot of money." Liu Shao, a member of the AE Chinese community, sorted out the symptoms and impacts before and after the attack. He introduced that the attack was initiated by an address starting with ak. Around December 3, this address began to collect a large amount of AE on the exchange. About 29 million AE, the maximum amount of a single account is about 27.5 million AE.
According to Liu Shao, at 4 am on December 6, Beijing time, the attack began to launch a "double-spend attack". Starting from block height 353225, an undisclosed private chain was forked; at 10 am on December 7, at When the block height reaches 353838, the longer private chain owned by the attacker is broadcast, covering the height of 353803 of the shorter main chain.
Afterwards, the hacker transferred more than 27,527,689 AEs to his wallet at block 353,230 of the private chain, and transferred the money to the exchange at the height of 353,227 on the broadcasted new chain; after transferring all of them to the exchange, he started trading. At the same time, hackers began to withdraw coins from the attacked exchange and sell them on other exchanges, and some exchanges with low confirmation numbers were recruited.
Liu Shao said that the value assets successfully cashed out from the exchange were taken away by hackers. In addition, hackers also took away some real AE in some exchanges and sold them on other platforms, involving a total loss of about 39 million AE.
This time AE was attacked, Huobi responded most promptly. At 11 a.m. on December 7, less than an hour after the hacker broadcasted the new chain, Huobi took the lead in stopping deposits and withdrawals, and contacted the AE community in time. The AE community also publicly stated that after the abnormality was found and tracked and confirmed, all exchanges in contact were notified around 2 pm, and around 3 pm, all exchanges stopped deposits and withdrawals one after another.
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AE assets outflowed from OKEx according to AE community statistics
According to the statistics of the AE community, OKEx suffered the biggest loss this time, with a loss of at least 16.87 million AE coins, equivalent to $2.3 million based on the price of AE at $0.152 when the attack was launched. These funds flowed to ZB, Huobi, Gate.io, Binance and other exchanges respectively.
Huobi, which has strong defenses, told Honeycomb Finance that shortly after the attack occurred, the program automatically opened the firewall after it was discovered. After the security department received the alarm, it notified to close the deposit and withdrawal at the front desk. However, due to the time difference, the project party could not respond in time.”
Huobi also disclosed the follow-up processing, saying that the number of block rollbacks in AE was within the number of confirmation times for the exchange’s security deposit, and the recharged assets could not be withdrawn from the platform; after the block rollback occurred, the wallet triggered the security mechanism, and the first Time has an asset deduction for transactions that are rolled back.
Liu Shao said that the source of the hacker is still not sure. When the attack was launched, the computing power increased by more than 10 times, "I don't know where the computing power came from." The data on the chain shows that all the AEs in the attacking address have been transferred out.
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Exchanges should be wary of currencies with small computing power
Recently, computing power projects based on the PoW consensus mechanism have often encountered 51% attacks. Among them, both ETC and Grin have encountered, and ETC has been "double spent" more than once.
On November 9, F2Pool officially announced that from 9:10 to 10:47 on November 8, the Grin network was attacked by 51%, and Grin mining was seriously affected. F2Pool reminds users that if there is a continuous attack in the future, the mining income will be affected. Please assess the risk by yourself and participate in Grin mining carefully.
On November 29, ETC suffered a 51% attack. The Kraken exchange reported that while the exchange was assessing chain stability, ETC deposits were temporarily unavailable due to another reorganization on the chain, which was caused by a malicious 51% attack.
As ETC has encountered 51% attacks many times, Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, recently stated on Twitter that 51% attacks are a basic property of the blockchain, not something that only happens in the case of malicious code.
After AE was attacked this time, Huobi, which was the first to shut down deposits and withdrawals, said that "double spending attacks" are actually difficult to defend against, and other chains have also been attacked in history.
Liu Shao also believes that in theory, the asset damage caused by the attack has nothing to do with the exchange, but the project side's business. He pointed out that cryptocurrencies with small computing power are prone to 51% attacks, which has become a security incident that cannot be ignored. When exchanges list these assets, they should have a sense of defense and do a good job in corresponding risk control.
After AE was attacked, Binance chose to delist AE. OKEx also stated that it will increase the review of similar projects in the future and strengthen the internal risk control of the platform.
