On December 30, the assets AE (Aeternity) and HC (HyperCash) of the two established projects will be delisted on Binance. On December 24, Binance announced that the reason for delisting was that “when coins no longer meet listing standards or there are major industry changes, Binance will conduct an in-depth project review and may delist them.”
At this stage, Bitcoin continued to break through the historical high market growth period, and the total market value of the AE and HC asset projects shrank 98% and 91% from their previous historical highs respectively, and the decline during the year was more than 20%.
It is worth mentioning that AE suffered a 51% attack on December 7, and many trading platforms were damaged. OKEx alone lost more than 16 million AEs.
Liu Shao from the AE Chinese community stated that the small computing power coin under the PoW consensus is vulnerable to “51% attacks.” Recently, ETC and Grin have encountered this attack. “If the project side and the exchange are not prevented in time, the exchange that stores a large amount of assets may become a victim.”
OKEx said that the exchange cannot control the 51% attack, but the platform still bears this part of the loss of the AE attack, and user assets are not affected. In the near future, the review of related projects will be increased to prevent attacks from affecting the asset security of the trading platform.
After AE was attacked, Huobi, the first to shut down deposits and withdrawals, also stated that the “51% attack” is not easy to prevent. When preventing such attacks, the exchange should evaluate the number of deposit confirmations, and increase the amount if necessary. The number of confirmations in the account block will be delayed. The calculation power must also be monitored at the same time. If there is an abnormality, immediately roll back to the correct state and close the wallet deposit and withdrawal.
Both AE and HC were star projects in the last bull market period for crypto assets. Before this year’s bull market period, assets in sectors such as DeFi and NFT became traffic stars and became new sources of centralized exchanges. In contrast, established projects have not continued to develop in the application scenarios, their assets are steadily retreating in the secondary market, and the motivation of team operation and maintenance projects is getting smaller and smaller, which also leaves attackers with opportunities. .
The market value of AE and HC has shrunk by 98% and 91% respectively
On December 27, the price of Bitcoin once again set a new historical record, breaking through $28,000, driving the crypto asset market into a long-term increase in market value.
This is reminiscent of the last bull market from 2017 to 2018, when Bitcoin flew with various assets. However, in this year’s market, among the top ten rankings of the market value of “various assets”, there are still Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC), which were previously called “mainstream coins”. Alcoin data shows that ChainLink (LINK) and the cross-chain network Polkadot (DOT), both of the DeFi sector’s oracle projects, have also squeezed into the top ten in market value.
The veteran public chain EOS fell to the 16th place, and some veteran projects are still facing the crisis of being delisted by the exchange. On December 24, Binance officially announced that it will delist AE (Aeternity) and HC (HyperCash) on December 30. The reason for the delisting is that they no longer meet Binance’s listing standards.
Binance said that Binance will regularly review the online crypto assets to ensure a high level of currency quality. When the coin no longer meets the listing standard or there are major industry changes, it will conduct in-depth project review, if necessary It will be removed from the shelf.
Binance will delist AE and HC on December 30
Aeternity’s asset AE is nicknamed “Auntie Coin” in the Chinese market. It was launched in 2016 by the German computer scientist Yanislav Malahov and the former core developer of Augur, ZackHess, who bears the name of the “Godfather of Ethereum.” European Ethereum”.
HyperCash benchmarked Bitcoin in 2018, and its asset HC was then known as a new generation of decentralized, open source, and cross-system digital encryption currency.
One of the two projects is against Ethereum and the other is against Bitcoin, but neither has subverted their opponents. At the moment when the market is improving, AE and HC are like brothers and sisters, and the market performance is a disaster.
As of 9 a.m. on December 27, AE temporarily reported $0.096, with a circulating market value of $30.71 million, a 98% reduction from the historical high of $1.15 billion, and a decline of 26.3% this year. At the same time, HC temporarily reported US$0.643, with a circulating market value of US$27.92 million, a 91% reduction from the historical high of US$274 million and a 41.5% drop during the year.
After Binance announced the delisting of AE, the project officials did not disclose any information. AE’s official Twitter, the last update was on November 28, when it was “Celebrating the second anniversary of the AE creation block.” In AE’s telegram group, users sang and said “Sell AE as soon as possible” and “Don’t hold any illusions.”
AE was affected by the “51% attack” exchange
Binance’s delisting may be related to the “51% attack” on AE on December 7. AE assets on multiple exchanges suffered losses due to this attack. But in response to the attack, AE officials did not make a broad public response.
“51% attack” is also called double-spending attack. Blockchain networks that adopt the proof-of-work PoW mechanism most often encounter this type of attack, that is, when a person or entity controls more than 51% of the mining power in the network, He can independently defeat the remaining computing power, reorganize or roll back the blockchain, and as a result, he can “spend a sum of money twice.”
If the assets on a certain blockchain chain have been listed on the exchange, once the attacker transfers the pseudo-assets on the “restructuring chain” to the exchange for trading, and without the attention of the exchange, other assets can be cashed in for profit. After the AE was attacked, some exchanges were indeed affected.
“The attacker was skilled in the operation, and he had paid for it.” Liu Shao, a member of the AE Chinese community, combed through the signs and impact before and after the attack. He introduced that the attack was initiated by an address beginning with ak. Around December 3, this address began to collect AEs on the exchange. After withdrawal, the coins were deposited in the 3 accounts planned to conduct a “double-spending attack”. Approximately 29 million AEs, and the maximum amount for a single account is approximately 27.5 million AEs.
During this period, AE’s currency price rose from $0.124 to a maximum of $0.209 on December 6. It rose by 90% on the 3rd, nearly doubled.
According to Liu Shao combing, at 4 a.m. Beijing time on December 6, the attack began to launch a “double-spending attack”. Starting at block height 353225, an undisclosed private chain was forked; at 10 a.m. on December 7th, When the block height reaches 353838, the longer private chain owned by the attacker is broadcast, covering the 353803 height of the shorter main chain.
Since then, the hacker transferred more than 27,527,689 AEs to his wallet at the height of 353,230 block of the private chain, and transferred the money to the exchange at the height of the new chain 353227, which was broadcast; after all transferred to the exchange, the transaction began. At the same time, hackers began to withdraw coins from the attacked exchange to sell on other exchanges, and some exchanges with low confirmation numbers were recruited.
Liu Shao said that the value assets successfully cashed out from the exchange were taken away by the hackers. In addition, the hackers also took away some real AEs in some exchanges and transferred them to other platforms to sell them, which involved a total loss of about 39 million AEs.
The AE was attacked and the most timely response was Huobi. At 11 am on December 7, about less than an hour after the hacker broadcasted the new chain, Huobi took the lead to stop the deposit and withdrawal and contact the AE community in time. The AE community also publicly stated that after finding an abnormal tracking confirmation, it notified all exchanges in contact at around 2 pm, and all exchanges stopped depositing and withdrawing at around 3 pm.
AE assets from OKEx calculated by the AE community
According to statistics from the AE community, OKEx suffered the greatest loss this time, losing at least 16.87 million AE coins, which is equivalent to 2.3 million US dollars based on the price of AE at the time of the attack. These funds went to exchanges such as ZB, Huobi, Gate.io, and Binance.
In this regard, OKEx also stated that the project is not controlled by 51% attacks on the exchange, but the platform will bear the loss of AE. “OKEx will increase the review of similar projects in the future, strengthen risk control, and prevent similar projects from encountering 51% attacks. To ensure the security of exchange assets.”
Huobi, a powerful defender, told Honeycomb Finance that shortly after the attack occurred, the firewall was automatically turned on after the program was discovered. After receiving the alarm, the security department notified the front desk to close the deposit and withdrawal. “After receiving the alarm, immediately communicate with the AE team. However, the project party failed to respond in time due to time lag.”
Huobi also disclosed subsequent processing that the number of block rollbacks in AE is within the number of confirmations on the exchange’s security account, and the recharged assets cannot be withdrawn from the platform; after the block rollback occurs, the wallet triggers the security mechanism. Time deducted the assets of the rolled back transaction.
According to the asset transfer data on the chain, Huobi not only suffered no losses this time, but also intercepted 4.25 million double-spending AEs on the exchange.
Liu Shao said that the source of the hackers is not yet known. When the attack was launched, the computing power had probably increased by more than 10 times, “I don’t know where the computing power came from.” The data on the chain shows that all AEs in the attacking address have been transferred out.
Exchanges should be wary of small computing power currencies
Recently, computing power projects based on the PoW consensus mechanism have often encountered 51% attacks. Among them, ETC and Grin have both encountered it, and ETC has been “double spent” more than once.
On November 9, F2Pool officially issued an announcement stating that between 9:10 and 10:47 on November 8, the Grin network was attacked by 51% and Grin mining was severely affected. F2Pool reminds users that if there are continuous attacks in the future, mining revenue will be affected. Please assess the risks yourself and participate in Grin mining carefully.
On November 29, ETC suffered a 51% attack. Kraken Exchange reported that when the exchange was evaluating chain stability, ETC deposits were temporarily unavailable due to another reorganization on the chain, which was caused by a malicious 51% attack.
As ETC has encountered 51% attacks many times, Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, recently stated on Twitter that 51% attacks are a basic attribute of the blockchain, not something that only happens in the case of malicious code.
After the AE attack this time, Huobi, the first to shut down the deposit and withdrawal, said that the “double-spend attack” is actually difficult to defend, and other chains have also been attacked in history.
Liu Shao also believes that in theory, the damage to assets caused by the attack has nothing to do with the exchange, but is the project’s business. He pointed out that cryptocurrencies with small computing power are prone to 51% attacks, which has become a security incident that cannot be ignored. Exchanges should be defensive when listing these assets and take appropriate risk control.
After AE was attacked, Binance chose to delist AE. OKEx also stated that it will increase the review of similar projects in the future and strengthen the internal risk control of the platform.
How to deal with the “double-spending attack”, Huobi said that it needs to evaluate the number of recharge confirmations, and if necessary, increase the number of confirmations in the account block to delay the account; at the same time, it is necessary to monitor the computing power. If there is an abnormality, it will be rolled back immediately. After the correct status, close the wallet deposit and withdrawal.
There are also teams in the industry that specialize in research and prevention of 51% attacks. In September of this year, MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) researchers believed that better monitoring of mining pools and hashrate rental markets could prevent 51% attacks. It is reported that the team is developing surveillance tools with a view to providing early warning systems for exchanges and other targets of such attacks.
AE, a veteran project that was dazzling in the last bull market, is declining, which is directly reflected in the issue of security risks. Behind it is the weakening of consensus, which makes them more and more away from the mainstream encrypted asset market. Especially this year, the emergence of new sections such as DeFi and NFT has made new assets a source of listing on centralized trading platforms. In the past, a batch of projects that focused on public chain scenarios and a new generation of Bitcoin have become more and more outdated in the presence of Ethereum.
When the original planned path of the project failed, the price of the currency was also steadily retreating in the secondary market, and the motivation of the team to operate and maintain the project was getting smaller and smaller, and the weakening of network consensus and construction of computing power also left attackers to take advantage of. machine. The attack on AE also sounded the alarm for the trading platform to increase security for the old projects.
