The Bitcoin Cash network has been chosen as the next target of the BitPico group, which has been responsible for the attack on June 22 and which, according to what has been announced, will continue during the next months.

This is what the members of the group have said since June 21 through the Twitter account @BitPico . They warn that they plan to extend the stress test to more than 5000 nodes in 6 weeks. The announcement of bitPico has generated mixed reactions within the community. Although there are those who claim that it is only "smoke".

"We have redesigned our stress test kit LN for $ bch #bcash @bitcoin Why? It is time to determine how centralized is really @rogerkver and we are 100% sure that we can divide the network into multiple branches. We will see a 51% attack on the #bitcoin #cash chain in September, "the tweet reads.

The group has earned a reputation for carrying out stress tests in the Bitcoin network. These stress tests are mechanisms to test the reliability and robustness of a software or a digital platform when subjected to extreme conditions of use. One of the most traditional ways is the excessive sending of requests and execution in limited hardware conditions.

Those who carry out the attacks seek to saturate the program until it reaches its breaking point in which potentially dangerous defects can appear.

Stress tests are also used by administrators to know if the platform to which they are subjected to attack will have optimal performance . That is, to test its performance in the event that the actual load may exceed the expected load.

The debate on the scope of this type of tests in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks reached the Reddit platform where users began to discuss the consequences of the attack.

Most in the bitcoiner community believe that the attempt will have no effect due to the Work Test (PoW) algorithm that keeps the entire network secure. Some argue that the purpose of the attack's authors is to create FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in English) or fear, uncertainty and doubt to put Bitcoin Cash at a disadvantage.

BITPICO ATTACK IN THE PAST
This is not the first time that BitPico attacks have occurred. On March 20, the Lightning Network (LN) micropayment network experienced a Denial of Service Attack (DDoS), which removed some 200 nodes from the network , from 1050 to about 870, which represented a fall of 20%.

At that time the signals were for the BitPico developers who claimed that they had created an attack in an automated way against the LN. The authors themselves later stressed that their intention was not to take funds , but to test the network.

At the beginning of November 2017, BitPico threatened to carry out a Bitcoin bifurcation after the main promoters of SegWit2x canceled the project to increase the size of the blocks in the main chain by means of a forced bifurcation. The BitPico group claimed that it could control 30% of the processing power of the Bitcoin network, something that was not demonstrated at the time.