Ethereum Classic Blockchain has abruptly incurred a surged transaction cost on the network and investors are worried. This has raised eyebrows among users with pundits speculating a possible double spend attack cooking.
In the wake of double spend attacks that saw Ethereum Classic blockchain loose upwards of $200,000 the previous week, questions of whether or not crypto exchanges are at an imminent risk of perpetration cannot be underlooked.
Transaction nightmare
The average transaction cost on the Ethereum Classic Blockchain which is usually about $0.71 has over the past 24 hours surged to a whopping $6.10 per transaction. The rise which represents more than 750% hike will go to books as the highest ever recorded average transaction cost in the history of the Ethereum Classic blockchain.
And even though the high transaction cost enabled miners to make upwards of 800 ETC on a single day, the event in itself is unusual to the miners and a clear pointer towards an undefined motive by an attacker that is yet to be determined.
Increased suspicion
Since Sunday, a series of complains and counter suspicions have been mounted with respect to the occurrences on the blockchain’s network. For instance, a user on the Ethereum Classic Discord complained of a possible near total hash power dedicated to verification of transaction codes and mining of new blocks. Another source familiar with the matter also reported that pool 2 miners of the Ethereum Classic blockchain were responsible for the greater part of the additional hashrate
Another suspicion entails a possibility that the perpetrator may be taking advantage of a vulnerability identified in the Ethereum gas tokens which enables users to create the gas tokens via exchanges at absolutely no costs. Gas refers to the charges imposed by networks for the services rendered. Level K, a smart contract developer determined that limitless ‘gas’ usage is a vulnerability that may be exploited by attackers to drain the exchanges off its funds.
“An exploit was found a few months ago where exchanges were paying [gas] for the exchange withdrawal. Unknown users were using this to withdraw and minting gas tokens for free [by] having the exchanges pay large amounts of gas,” Burns explained in an interview with CoinDesk
This narrative has however faced criticism from the likes of Bitfly CEO Peter Pratscher who was of the view that the surge was either “a mistake or an intentional measure to subsidize ETC mining pool and prevent further 51% attacks”
