The Ravencoin blockchain project team has reported a critical vulnerability in the consensus network. Due to this technical problem, some nodes accepted invalid blocks. The first problematic block was discovered on August 7 at an altitude of 4487776. Mining pools 2Miners and RavenMiner announced the creation of an alternative chain. They started mining from block 4487775 without a branch with a vulnerability. This version of the network may become dominant in the coming days. The network is at risk of going through a deep reorganization for about three days. The developers asked the pools to select a later recovery point. This solution could reduce the damage to ordinary users and exchanges. However, mining pools refused to comply with this request from the developers. The two largest pools control about eighty-five percent of the hashrate.

The blockchain project recommended that exchanges temporarily stop operations with the RVN token. The team called transactions after block 4487775 risky. Some of the confirmed transfers can be returned to the mempool without guarantees. Exchanges were advised not to rely on automatic recovery of cancelled transactions. The Bitvavo platform has already suspended the input and output of the RVN token. Upbit, the largest South Korean platform, has stopped accepting customer deposits. This exchange has added a special warning for asset trading pairs. Over the past 24 hours, the RVN token has dropped by almost twenty percent. The price of the coin dropped to the level of 0.0029 USD. The project's market capitalization has been reduced to forty-seven million dollars. Since the beginning of the year, the token has lost about fifty-eight percent of its value. The price has dropped by ninety-nine percent from the historical maximum.

The Ravencoin team emphasized the importance of transparent publication of all technical details. This information is needed for risk assessment by all market participants. The developers do not support specific rollback or chain selection. In 2020, the network has already encountered a similar critical bug. Then the attackers released about twenty-one million coins in excess of the rewards. Such incidents force the community to revisit the sustainability of decentralized systems. In April of this year, a similar situation occurred on the Litecoin network. Hackers have exploited a zero-day vulnerability to attack the blockchain. The deep reorganization of the network was the result of this hacker attack. The current situation demonstrates how important it is for miners and developers to coordinate their actions during off-site events on the blockchain.

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The material has been prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or recommendation.