Sirlibz
The privacy focused project Grin Network has been hit with a 51% attack on its blockchain. Grin Network utilizes the Mimblewimble protocol, a protocol that hides users identities when conducting transactions, the same protocol shared by lots of privacy focused projects like Beam.
A tweet from the official 2Miners twitter handle showed that they were under a 51% attack when a group of unknown miners or mining groups took charge and controlled more than half of the blockchains hashing power.
A 51% attack does not necessarily mean that the group of miners have had intentions, but having this control can affect the organization of blocks, potentially causing volatility in the token price thereby dropping confidence in tie blockchain. Data obtained from Grind Scan shows that the attackers were able to reorganize at least one forked block; this was done at 23:17 UTC on November 7. The unknown attacker has since then grown it’s control and now controls 58.1% of Grin’s harsh rate. 2Miners has risen to 24:6%, while sparkpool miners has dropped to 11.3%. The token seems not to be affected much with the attack, it has only experienced a decline of only 1.9% according to coingecko’s data.
What is a 51% Attack
A 51% attack on a blockchain is simply some individuals or a group of people trying to control more than 50% of a blockchain network’s mining power, computing power or the hash rate. If the attack is successful, then the attacker would command more than 50% of the blockchain computing power and can reverse transactions leading to double spending, can block new transactions from taking place or being confirmed.
The Ethereum classic (ETC) blockchain has reportedly suffered at least 51% in August where the attackers caused the reorganization of thousands of blocks.
