Unfortunately, Litecoin was attacked today. The network ground to a halt as large transactions were flying in, and pools were producing small (or even zero) transaction blocks.
What happened?
An attacker has been spamming the network with with dust transactions. Each transaction is costing the attacker roughly 0.09 LTC ($4.00), which means the attacker either has a lot of money to waste, or some of the LTC pools are responsible for the attack (because they just mine the fees back).
Because of all of these dust transactions, the mempool (unconfirmed transactions) has been filling up on many litecoin nodes, causing issues processing deposits and sending transactions. This has resulted in several major LTC exchanges including Poloniex, BTC-e, and GDAX all disabling LTC deposits/withdrawals.
Why is this happening?
It's believed that AntPool and BW may be responsible for the attack. This is unconfirmed, but evidence points to them, as they are producing blocks with very few transactions which means the spam transactions take a long time to confirm, thus clogging up the mempool.
It's possible that this is also an attack from large Bitcoin stakeholders now that Segwit is passing on Bitcoin on the 1st of August.
Is someone doing something about this?
The Litecoin Foundation and Litecoin Association are both aware of the issues, the issue was discussed in the private slack. It's unknown at this time whether there will be a software fix for the spam, or if the issues will simply resolve themselves.
In the meantime, all you can do is wait... You can find out updates on the official Litecoin slack or at the reddit
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Fascinating. This must be a very costly attack if it is not the pools involved.
Isn't it rather odd for an established pool to be suspected of something like this?
I also wonder this. You suggest antpool may be involved... but the question is why?
Why are transactions considered an attack when a fee is being paid for the transaction?
They are fake transactions designed to clog the network so that real transactions don't go through or just take a really long time to confirm. That's why it's an attack. They want to stop LTC or at least slow it down. LiteCoin has crazy momentum right now which is threatening their profit. These attacks are expensive and cant last.
Thanks for letting us know why the exchanges were halting the trading of LTC today.. This is very important news.
Wow, can't believe I had not seen/heard of this today. This is big news.
It was probably just some Ethereum fan boy, who got ticked off the other day by Charlie Lee's comment pertaining to Ethereum's inferior technology.
Thank you for the update around this man, i was wondering what the price dip on LTC was about. What do you think the likeliness of this actually being an attacker by an outsider is? Like that the pool are not responsible?
I'm not sure. The issue wouldn't be anywhere near as bad if the pools were producing full size blocks to flush out the mempool...
Fair enough. I guess it is another case of vote with your mining power. Speaking of which, what would i need to do to get your vote on peerplays? Ignore me if you feel in anyway that this is vote begging.
Is there any problem if you are not sending any coins. Just holding LTC?
Looks like a text book Jihan Wu play... create FUD, buy into weakness. Probably a good sign to buy LTC.
BUY BUY BUY
This is a good point. However I do worry if it might be someone testing a vulnerability in segwit, in preparation for bitcoin adopting it. I really hope that's not the case.
Why are these attacks happening everyday in crypto world? I am so confused. :-(
it's the wild wild west of investment...filled with confused investors and devious scammers
Because they are suppose to, if we dont test we dont know where the holes are, this is not old style banking with decrepit garbage security systems, this is cryptocurrency, and if it doesnt function in the wild then it doesnt function.
hahaha I'm very confused too!
Thanks for sharing this information. I did notice on poloniex this morning that LTC was disabled but I had no clue why.
Nice post! Was wondering what was going on.
It would be interesting if possible to patch such spam attack with a code update. Being a former miner of LTC, these are interesting time: Segwit2x, Charlie Lee's FT work for LTC etc.
I feel like I have heard this happen before also, to Bitcoin though...very interesting. Thx for the post
That sucks, I just traded some DASH for LTC on shapeshift (with exodus wallet) it it went through, but took way longer than normal, now I know why! thanks man great post indeed!
Well the good news is lite coin can only improve from this!!! Im really excited to what lite coin dose in 4th quarter!!
Should something be done about this? It shouldn't be the case whereby one person spending many times of $4 is able to disrupt an entire currency
Hmm why would someone do this. I think it's just a temporary thing and it will be solved quickly. I don't think it will have any long term damage.
hmm... shouldn't there be a negative response from market after such attack? Right now litecoin is +8.70%.
haha probably there should be but the market is dumb and slow and confused.
I just heared about the attack today and i wondered all the time why ltc didnt rise back when btc did...
The Bitcoin mempool has dropped off a lot in the past few weeks as well. I think the same group that's bloating the LTC mempool currently was behind the previous BTC bloat, cough Jihan, cough.
Another day in the office...
I had a litecoin transaction today take a lot longer than usual, didn't know why. Thanks for the info.
thanks for the info...upvoted and followed
I noticed Poloniex Froze Litecoin transactions just as I cashed my Litecoin out for BTC this morning. I felt lucky on that move. I was wondering what happened. Hope they can resolve this problem. Had high hopes for LTC!
I am all about the LITES! It seems most logical that this is a bitcoin attack on the litecoin network to slow it down as BTC activates segwit
Yeah things like this are good to know to show that polo isnt the only one having problems.
Thx Guy's for the Information's around The Bitcoin and Other Coin's.
Nice & Good Job.😊👍
Thanks for the update, LTC had been humming along so nicely while the other coins were having drama. Guess it was just a matter of time till something popped up.
On the day I buy LTC, I run into this article. Got a new follower. Great info.
Upvote and comments
Litecoin is might take a huge toll due to this attack.
It is not doing great against BTC but at least it is rising.
Let's hope it can recover and break some new goals.
I didn't know this happened so thanks for this crypto news update @someguy123
Hi @someguy123, great content and upvoted like always. I've a question to an cryptotrader like you. I made a top 5 of my favourite cryptoinvestment for the coming period. Would you agree with some of them? Especially with Litecoin after this? Here is my crypto top 5 if you are interested.
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Edit: wrong post! Sorry!
If Litecoin is under attack then you have work to do I see :P
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