The Bitcoin Gold team has responded to the recent spate of 51 percent and double spend attacks, which led to $18 million worth of BTG being stolen.
A blog post published by Bitcoin Gold’s developers states that they’ve sent out a “detailed memo” to cryptocurrency exchanges that list its BTG token. Additionally, the blog post notes that they intend to be as “transparent” as possible regarding these attacks.
The cryptocurrency’s team has also requested that cryptocurrency exchanges who have not yet received their memo contact them, so that they can send out the important notice. In response to this incident, the post says:
“We want you to know what’s going on, what we’re doing, and what’s going to happen next.”
More Hashpower, More Security
The notice explains that the 51 percent attack did not occur because there was something inherently wrong with the Bitcoin Gold blockchain. It clarifies that a bad actor who manages to control the majority of a blockchain’s hashpower power could theoretically launch 51 percent attack, even on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
The cryptocurrency’s team, however, acknowledged that:
“Bitcoin has an order of magnitude more hashpower than some other coins mined with the same SHA256 algorithm, like Bitcoin Cash and Digibyte, so Bitcoin is relatively safe.”
Per the team, BTG was targeted because of its liquidity, as this allows bad actors to profit from the attack. Only those trading large volumes are at risk of losing funds. The notice points out individual traders and holders aren’t at risk.
The team behind the cryptocurrency revealed it plans on making it “dramatically safer from a 51% attack” by shifting over to a different mining algorithm. Despite the assurance given, the cryptocurrency’s developers have not yet provided an exact date for their mainnet upgrade. What they revealed is that they expect to upgrade their mainnet “approximately seven days after the necessary software is up and running on our testnet.”
