Ravencoin, which is the 63rd largest crypto by market capitalization, recently saw 1.5% of the total supply of its coins minted by hackers. By exploiting a bug in the project, the hackers made away with close to $5.7 million worth of crypto.
About the Hack
On July 3, 2020, Ravencoin published a medium post in which they revealed that they had lost 1.5% of the total supply of RVN to hackers. The total supply of RVN is capped at 21 billion. Investigations are still ongoing. Thus far, they have revealed that the hackers walked away with around 315 million RVN tokens.
The Stolen RVN Cannot Be Recovered
At the current market price, the stolen RVN is worth around $5.7 million. Once the project team became aware of the issue, they reported it to the authorities. Thus far, they have not been able to identify who was behind the attack.
The Exploit
The bug in the system made it even harder to discover who was behind the attack. Those who stole the RVN did not do so directly. Instead, they stole the coin by increasing the inflation of the RVN blockchain. Once they stole the RVN, the hackers immediately sold it off. As a result, any attempt to remedy the problem would only cause grief for those that bought the RVN. One of the solutions the team has come up with is to upgrade the network. All miners and nodes within the network have to upgrade to the new version to prevent a recurrence of the event.
Ravencoin ( RVN ) Price
With 1.5% of the total supply being abolished, many thought it would negatively affect RVN price. At the time of this report, RVN has rallied +3.5% the last 24 hours which is quite interesting. Theoretically speaking, the upward momentum tells a lot about investor sentiment following the breach. Investors seem to believe that upgrading the network will be a viable solution against future hackers.
How to Remedy the Situation
One of the solutions that has been used after a similar incident is blocking the stolen coins. In December 2019, VeChain lost around 1.1 billion VET tokens to hackers. At the time, the coins were worth around $6.3 million. The team froze all the addresses containing the coins and then proposed an upgrade to the VeChain blockchain. Their goal was to ensure that the hackers would never get to use the coins.
However, such a solution would not work for the stolen RVN coins since the hackers have already spent them. The other solution would be to work with crypto exchanges globally to try to trace how the hackers moved the coins. If any of them made a mistake and left a digital footprint, it could help the team press charges against them. Collaboration within the crypto community has been growing and this could be a viable solution.
One of the proposals made by the team is to have a halving event, which would compensate for the lost coins. However, others have suggested leaving the issue as it is.
A Need for More Developers
A major problem that budding projects face when building their ecosystem is that there are just not enough blockchain developers in the world. With major companies such as IBM stepping into the space, finding developers to maintain the network will no doubt become even harder. The remaining developers focus most of their attention on major projects such as BTC and Ethereum.
About Ravencoin
Based on a fork of the Bitcoin code, Ravencoin was launched in January 2018. The ultimate goal of the project is to facilitate instant payments to anybody around the world. The blockchain was structured in that it can transfer assets from one party to another with 1 minute block times.
Notice: Information contained herein is not and should not be construed as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to buy or sell securities. The information has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable; however no guarantee is made or implied with respect to its accuracy, timeliness, or completeness. Authors may own the crypto currency they discuss. The information and content are subject to change without notice. Visionary Financial and its affiliates do not provide investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only and is the opinion of the author, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, investment, tax, legal, accounting advice. You should consult your own investment, tax, legal and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction. All content published by Visionary Financial is not an endorsement whatsoever. Visionary Financial was not compensated to submit this article Please also visit our Privacy policy; disclaimer; and terms and conditions page for further information.
