Monero Under 51% Attack - What’s Happening and What to Expect

The 51% attack on the Monero network I warned about earlier now appears to have actually happened. Judging by the pattern of blocks appearing and disappearing, it seems the attack has taken the nastiest possible form. The attacking pool isn’t just replacing individual blocks as they’re mined - it’s privately mining an entire chain of blocks, then, once that chain becomes longer than the current blockchain, broadcasting it to the network. This forces the network to switch to the attacker’s chain, invalidating a whole batch of previously mined blocks at once. In theory, such reorganizations could run quite deep.

There’s no need to panic, though - and no one really is. Even XMR’s price has dropped less than 6% in the past 24 hours. Running an attack like this isn’t cheap, and sooner or later the attacking pool will run out of funds. It’s just a matter of waiting.

But it’s not only the end of the attack we need to wait for. As I warned earlier, transaction confirmation times on the Monero network have also become longer for security reasons. So if you’re sending Monero for exchange on rabbit.io - be patient. Over the next few days, Monero swaps may take significantly longer than usual to complete.