Feathercoin 51% Attack

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Feathercoin

Feathercoin was a fork/split of litecoin. Back in 2013 it was one of the more popular coins, with faster transactions and resistance to ASIC mining hardware. However, the network was attacked by a sustained 51% attack where a large amount of computing power was set up and used to double spend transactions. As a result of the attack, the feathercoin network implemented a checkpoint system, where the system is periodically saved at specific points, which nodes then agree not to deviate from, even if a longer chain is received.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Feathercoin

"Feathercoin is a crypto currency that made its first public appearance on the Bitcointalk forum on April 16th 2013. Its lead coder is Peter Bushnell, an IT officer at Brasenose College, Oxford University." "Feathercoin is a Litecoin clone that shares its 2.5 minute block time and the scrypt mining algorithm. The altcoin is currently ranked 461st on the list of cryptocurrencies on coinmarketcap.com. Feathercoin barely receives any notice today but was a top cryptocurrency around the time it suffered a 51% attack."

"Feathercoin started out as an upgraded version of Bitcoin, stemming from Litecoin and sharing the same decentralized cryptocurrency blockchain. Feathercoin is built on Bitcoin's open source software. In fact FTC was forked from Litecoin, so it's also safeguarded from the effects of ASIC mining. But even so, it does not compete with BTC or LTC, it complements them."

"Feathercoin has the distinction of being one of the first digital currencies to get hit with a 51 percent attack as on June 2013, the Feathercoin network suffered multiple devastating 51-percent attacks." "The Jun. 8th attack on the Feathercoin network started with a marked increase in the network’s hashrate. It was suspected that the additional mining power came from miners on scrypt-based pools. According to the founder of Feathercoin, the miners were looking to benefit from the increased profitability on mining Feathercoin due to a change in difficulty."

"The attack was marked by a dramatic increase in the hash rate on the Feathercoin network, said Bushnell. The network was operating at a sustained 0.2 Gigahashes/sec prior to the attack. It jumped to 1.5 Gigahashes/sec, he said. That hashing power could have been redirected from any existing Scrypt-based pool, including a Litecoin pool."

"A total of 80 blocks were orphaned in the initial attack. Orphaned blocks are valid blocks on a network that are later replaced because a longer chain with greater proof-of-work takes precedence. This means confirmed FTC transactions were reversed in the attack. Some miners also ended up wasting effort on mining blocks that were eventually replaced on the chain."

"The problem was compounded when the official Feathercoin website suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack around the same time."

"According to Tradeblock, exchanges had to increase Feathercoin confirmation requirements to ensure that only valid transactions on the right chain were processed. The advanced checkpointing (ACP) feature was also introduced by the Feathercoin team to prevent future 51% attacks. However, the attack still devastated confidence in FTC and it has since fallen into obscurity."

“I figured the market would react negatively to all this news but the buy support has stayed strong,” Bushnell said. “It shows that there is a lot of confidence in Feathercoin. We will get through these attacks I have no doubt about that.”

"Feathercoin has announced advanced checkpointing in its block chain to protect against 51% attacks. The advanced checkpointing (ACP) feature will remove the need for changes to client software by publishing a feed of checkpoints, via a central node."

"I am trying to make a safe environment for miners and merchants. We had some large scale attacks when our hash power was much less than we see now. During that time, miners had a large number of blocks orphaned. Some lost days worth of mining," said Feathercoin founder, Peter Bushnell. "This is unacceptable and considering the scale of these attacks I think it is absolutely important to make sure that the attackers are not able to take control of the network like this again."

"What we would have to do is find trusted nodes. It would make sense that this belongs to the miners. So all the major pools should be nodes as this is where the miners are. Currently the difficulty is too high to solo mine, the only person solo mining are the attackers. These are future plans but right now there is only one node checkpointing and I am the only person with access to the node."

"As a result, Feathercoin still carries along its legacy of being a less secure coin. and Even with the later introduced ACP, this remains a serious issue for Feathercoin, and confirmations should be generally considered much less secure than a comparable number of confirmations on Bitcoin or Litecoin networks."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

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• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Feathercoin 51% Attack

Date	Event	Description
June 8th, 2013 12:00:00 AM	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost is unknown.

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Immediate Reactions

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Ultimate Outcome

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Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

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Ongoing Developments

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Prevention Policies

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