Verge network undergoes major reorganisation

On Monday, February 15, the Verge cryptocurrency network (XVG), whose payments are supported by the popular adult site Pornhub, underwent a major reorganisation of blocks.

As a result, data on transactions and balances dated July 2020 disappeared from the blockchain. This was reported by Coin Metrics researcher Antoine Le Calvez.

Looks like $XVG (Verge) experienced a massive 560k+ blocks reorg.@coinmetrics‘ node is on a new chain whose last common ancestor with the previous chain dates to July 2020.

— Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) February 15, 2021

Coin Metrics analyst Lucas Nuzzi called the Verge reorganisation the deepest of all that have ever occurred in the blockchains of top-100 cryptocurrencies.

The past 200 days worth of $XVG transaction history just vanished.

This is likely the deepest reorg that has ever taken place in a «top 100» cryptocurrency. https://t.co/ItFNBVZqbp

— Lucas Nuzzi (@LucasNuzzi) February 15, 2021

Hasu noted that the cryptocurrency community could reject the attacker’s chain and restore the previous one. According to him, the transactions were replaced with empty blocks.

What sounds scary is actually pretty easy to counter — nodes will reject the attacker’s chain and restore the previous one. But it’s another data point showing why GPU mineable coins are inherently insecurehttps://t.co/5tu0UXHuJd

— Hasu (@hasufl) February 15, 2021

In the night of February 16, Verge developers reported the issue and released a patch. The team promised to restore normal operation of the network within a few hours.

Malicious elements have tried to take over our blockchain. Working with miners our dev team has released a fix, preventing damage.

In 13 hours, it will be business as usual.

Thank you for your understanding.#xvg #vergecurrency

— VergeCurrency (@vergecurrency) February 15, 2021

At the time of writing, the price of XVG stood at $0.023 (according to CoinGecko). Over the last hour, the asset’s price fell by 1.2%, taking it out of the top-100 cryptocurrency rankings.

Data: CoinGecko.

In April 2018, the Verge network was subject to a 51% attack due to a bug in the code. A month later the problem recurred and affected all pools and miners.

What is a 51% attack?

In August 2020, the Ethereum Classic was subjected to a 51% attack — the depth of the reorganisation was 7000 blocks.

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