Verge Might Fork After 51% Attack

The privacy coin Verge, famed for its underdelivery of groundbreaking promises, has fallen prey to a 51% attack, according a Bitcointalk forum member “ocminer.” Around 250,000 verge (USD 14.750) were stolen by the attacker and the community is now estimating that Verge is preparing for a hard fork.

A 51% attack is a situation where more than half of the computing power on a network is operated by a single individual or concentrated group, which gives them complete and total control over a network.

Verge did not comment on a possible fork, only tweeting this:

According to the Bitcointalk forum member who first posted about it, the attack was possible due to a bug in the altcoin’s code. The attacker was able to mine multiple blocks one second apart, all performed using the scrypt algorithm – something that should have been impossible – and although the attack stopped three hours later, the attacker had already confirmed hundreds of blocks, making a rollback of the blockchain necessary to undo the damage. Lead Verge developer Justin managed to fix the problem temporarily, but the community is discussing that now a hard fork must be initiated to remedy the matter once and for all.

And to make matters even worse, at least one Verge bagholder has fallen victim to a Twitter scam that promised “compensation” after he sent them a certain amount of ETH.

Up until this point, only in 2018, Verge had privacy leaks, a Twitter hack, developer doxxed and begged its community for USD 3 million (and they delivered!), and this 51% attack. However, its followers remain steadfast.

Electroneum is another coin reported to have suffered a 51% attack: a Reddit user found evidence of a possible attack a few days ago. Although nobody knows for sure who the perpetrator is, the comment thread of that post offers insight into the public opinion.

This is not the only controversial thing reported in the crypto world: as Bloomberg finds out from unnamed sources, Ripple’s absence from big crypto exchanges, Gemini and Coinbase, is not for lack of trying. Last year, a Ripple executive asked whether a USD 1 million cash payment could persuade Gemini to list XRP in the third quarter. This actually followed other attempts that included exploring strategies like paying out rebates and covering related costs, all in order to get Gemini to list their coin on the exchange.

Coinbase saw a similar offer: during preliminary talks last fall, Ripple supposedly said it would be willing to lend the exchange more than USD 100 million worth of XRP to start letting users trade the asset. Although the offer was not put in writing, a person privy to the conversation told Bloomberg that Ripple offered Coinbase to pay this amount back in either XRP or dollars, where, upon choosing the latter, “[the exchange] could have profited had the tokens become more valuable upon being listed.”

Gemini and Coinbase both refused these proposals.