After the 51% attack, Krypton platform decided to abandon Ethereum and turn to Bitcoin

Krypton, an Ethereum-based blockchain, has announced that it has taken interim action to protect its KR token from being stolen from exchanges due to double spending. It was previously reported that the attackers were likely to use the same method to attack other Ethereum blockchains, such as ETC.

Krypton founder Stephanie Kent said in an announcement:

“Krypton is moving KR from an Ethereum-based proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to a Bitcoin-based proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.”

51% attack group

Last month, the Krypton blockchain was hacked twice by an anonymous group known as 51crew.

The group was able to exploit a critical blockchain vulnerability to conduct a two-step attack. The first step was to gain overwhelming power by gaining at least 51% of the network's computing power, thereby rolling back transactions and subsequently spending the same coins again. The second step was to increase the network's computing power using DDoS nodes.

The attackers have stolen 21,465KR.

According to Kent, the vulnerability exists in all Ethereum-based blockchains written in golang, and targets blockchains with a total network hashrate of 100GH/s or less. Another Ethereum-like cryptocurrency, Shift, has also been the target of a similar 51% attack.

She said:

“Krypton, Shift, Soil, and Expanse are all cryptocurrencies that are vulnerable to this attack. Some large mining farms could also attack ETC in this way.”

The Battle of Krypton Begins

In order to be able to continue to develop after the attack, the Krypton development team has written this POS blockchain, as well as Windows and Mac versions of the KR wallet to store the transferred KR coins.

However, because Krypton is actually moving to a new protocol, this is not a simple repair upgrade. Krypton needs to digitally replace the old chain's KR with the new chain's KR. Krypton has notified the two exchanges that support KR, Bittrex and Yobit, and Bittrex has agreed to serve as the administrator of Krypton's conversion. Currently, the Bittrex exchange only supports the storage of KR.