Ravencoin "SLOW-HACKED!" 315 Million New Coins Minted

A community code submission caused a bug that has been exploited. Law enforcement has been notified and is working with us.

A so-called "slow-hack" has infected the Ravencoin (RVN) network, resulting in a massive over-inflation of the available coin supply.

Approximately 1.5% additional coins of RVN's proposed 21 billion total supply have been minted via the exploit, though the exact details of how the exploit works still remain unpublished.

The USD value of the exploit is approximately $5,758,830 as of the time of writing.

The inflation hack did not directly affect any existing unique assets already issued on the RVN network, but has been propagated into direct forks of the coin's base code, and with 315 million new coins in circulation it can be supposed that new assets will cost the attackers nothing to create- if they still hold any RVN.

Ravencoin lead developer Tron Black states in his Medium article that,

These extra RVN appear to have been sold into the market shortly after minting, so the economic damage has already been absorbed by the Ravencoin ecosystem.

The RVN team will not be disclosing further details of the exploit until a bug fix is distributed and the blockchain is confirmed stable. The exception to this disclosure policy is that developers of forked coin projects will be looped in as soon as possible. Their joint findings will undoubtedly help the broader blockchain community defend against similar attacks in the future.