Ethereum Classic lost more than 10% of its value today with price standing just above $1 as the network comes under sustained dos attack. The attacks are similar to those experienced by Ethereum over last month. A programmer is exploiting gas mispricing for certain op codes to drain nodes of memory and other resources thus slowing them down. Who or why is a matter of speculation. For ETC, considering the dramatic price movement, it could well be financially motivated and might not even be the original attacker, but a copycat. Ethereum Classic’s Price Crashes as Network Comes Under Dos Attack For the original Ethereum attacker , prime suspicion goes to Bitcoin Core developers who have previously shown willingness to play dirty by DDoSing Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic nodes. Attack, for an apparently stagnant bitcoin that is still stuck on a never ending blocksize debate, is, of course, the best defense, but it may well be the case that the network is actually being thoroughly tested by legitimate projects who wish to see the developers’ reaction while under pressure. The timing for the first attack could not be better for both ends of this speculative spectrum. On one hand, a genuine selfish attacker is placed to cause most damage while almost everyone is sleeping in Shanghai at 4 AM in the morning with four hours until Devcon2 opening and Ethereum’s big day. On the other hand, and equally, a legitimate project cannot find a better time to test the team’s reaction and see whether their project would be in good hands. Regardless, the solution for both Ethereum networks is a hardfork. The question is when. Gavin Wood has called for a fast network upgrade as soon as possible. Vitalik Buterin publicly hinted today that a hardfork is underway. There […]
