Crypto Used for Pornhub Payments Suffers '51% Attack'

It looks like Verge, the cryptocurrency that was embraced for its ability to make discreet payments, has suffered an indiscretion of its own. 

The popular Pornhub payment option has suffered an attack on its blockchain, leading to over 200 days of transactions completely vanishing. 

Initially, rumors were surfacing that the blockchain was hit by a 51% attack, which is known to reap massive profits. This type of attack sees the majority of the hash power on a blockchain taken over by the hackers. Once they have majority control of the network, they “reorganize” the blockchain, swapping out legitimate blocks and replacing them with new blocks. This type of attack also prevents miners from completing new blocks. 

It’s not quite clear what happened to the Verge blockchain just yet and whether it was a victim of a 51% attack or not. 

Verge argues that it didn’t encounter a 51% attack as a message from the Verge administrative team said:

“The official block explorer has been restarted and syncing now, the [database] was corrupted, and it looks like some malicious nodes attempted some [transaction] spam and failed at their goal of causing a fork, this is all the information I have currently, an official update will be coming soon, stay calm and be assured your coins are safe, and yes we will be communicating with the exchanges as soon as we have all the details, No there was not a 51% attack.”

Either way, Verge suffered from a 560,000-block reorganization on Monday. 

The blockchain gained popularity in April 2018 after becoming the first digital currency to be adopted by Pornhub.

Before the attack, Verge had a market cap above $400 million, making it close to being a top 100 cryptocurrency. As of today, the price of Verge is trading at $0.023, with reports coming in that withdrawals are being delayed on Yobit. 

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