Lethean Community,
We appreciate your patience during our investigation of the attacks on our blockchain. On 10/21/18 at 00:00 UTC, our blockchain was attacked. The attack exploited the difficulty algorithm, and the attacker managed to acquire approximately 5.4 million Lethean, which is roughly a week’s worth of block rewards. Prior to the attack on 10/21/18, we were investigating a potential attack that occurred earlier that day. The first attack on our network was not accepted by our blockchain. However, because the initial attempt raised our suspicions, we paused trading on our exchanges.
After the second attack, it became clear to us that we would need to protect our community and the value of Lethean. After confirming with exchanges that the last exchange deposit occurred on or before block 296287, we made the decision to roll back the blockchain to block 296287. This was not a decision that we took lightly. This decision was made in the interest of our investors and community. Any trading on exchanges during this time will not result in a loss for our community, and the rollback to block 296287 will result in the attacker not receiving any stolen blocks.
After it was concluded that the crux of the attack was the difficulty algorithm, our developers corrected the underlying issue. Other coins using the algorithm have been notified. On the plus side, the new difficulty algorithm should offer improved reliability and shorter gaps between blocks when hash power fluctuates, and that the new CryptoNight version 2 (also referred to as Monero version 8) technology was implemented into our blockchain. In conjunction with the previously mentioned changes, our development team has also implemented a few bug fixes. We were hoping to implement the changes today. However, we want to ensure that we test the code extensively and ensure compatibility with pools and mining software before we execute the hard fork. Due to these extensive tests, we have pushed back the implementation until later today, October 23rd, and our community should anticipate its release in the late afternoon.
What does this mean for our community?
Until the fork has been finalized and the changes are live, our community should pause all mining, and any deposits or withdrawals to any location, whether it is an exchange or not. Any transactions that are sent after block 296287 will be reverted back to their location on that block. This means that if a transaction did not exist before or on this block, then it will no longer exist on the post-hard fork blockchain, and the funds will be where they were before sending as of block 296287.
Once the hard fork has been implemented, you will be required to download the new Lethean wallet. Once you have downloaded the wallet, you will only need to open your wallet file to access your Lethean. The blockchain should properly fork and sync without additional steps required.
We will be working with our exchanges in the coming days to ensure that they are operational and capable of accepting deposits and withdrawals.
As always, if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us on our social media platforms, Discord, or Telegram. Any coin developers looking for information on the exploit and its relevance to the LWMA difficulty algorithm are also welcome to contact us for clarification or assistance. We would be happy to assist you.
Regards,
The Lethean Team.
