BSV reportedly suffers ‘massive’ 51% attack

“After an attempted attack yesterday, some serious hashing power was unleashed today at 11:46 am and attackers are succeeding,” said Lucas Nuzzi of Coin Metrics, referring to the Bitcoin SV chain.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) has reportedly suffered a “massive” 51% attack beginning around 11:45 am Tuesday, resulting in up to three versions of the chain being mined simultaneously.

Analytics provider Coin Metrics confirmed Tuesday afternoon that its FARUM risk management platform had identified the 51% attack.

FARUM has identified a 51% attack today on the BSV network at around 11:45AM EDT.https://t.co/Oy19UDw53t https://t.co/T3MMRHqPe8

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) August 3, 2021

Information about the attack was further corroborated by Lucas Nuzzi, a network data product manager at Coin Metrics. “Someone is seriously trying to destroy BSV,” he tweeted, adding:

For over 3 hours, attackers were able to take over the chain. All exchanges that received BSV deposits during that time might have been double spent.

At the time of writing, it was unclear whether the attack had ended or whether the perpetrator was just taking a break.

FARUM has identified a 51% attack today on the BSV network at around 11:45AM EDT.https://t.co/Oy19UDw53t https://t.co/T3MMRHqPe8

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) August 3, 2021

The latest update from Coin Metrics confirmed that its FARUM nodes witnessed a "deep reorg with a max depth of 14 blocks." Although no further reorganization events were observed, "synchronization conflicts" are still taking place across major mining pools. 

All of our FARUM nodes witnessed a deep reorg with a max depth of 14 blocks.

No further reorganization events have been witnessed, but there are still synchronization conflicts taking place on major mining pools. pic.twitter.com/aM6FoWOKke

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) August 3, 2021

Bitcoin Association, an industry group that supports the adoption of BSV, issued a statement about the ongoing attack:

To invalidate the fraudulent chain, node operators should run the following command on their #BitcoinSV node:

bitcoin-cli invalidateblock 000000000000000003B67AEC95E9B5DA897EB5EBF3227D5A6A67835104367840

Please reach out on Twitter with any questions for the BA team.

2/2

— Bitcoin Association (@BitcoinAssn) August 3, 2021

Bitcoin SV was the result of a highly contentious hard fork of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain in November 2018. BSV has an identical monetary policy to BCH and Bitcoin (BTC), though the fork was a result of deep internal disagreements with the Bitcoin Cash community regarding a set of proposals to make transactions more efficient.

Referred to as "Bitcoin Satoshi Vision," BSV has had no shortage of detractors since its split from BCH. While the so-called BCH conservatives prevailed in the hash war, BSV still emerged as one of the largest blockchain networks in terms of monetary value. Although its ranking has fallen precipitously, BSV currently has a market capitalization of just over $2.6 billion.