The price of ETHPoW (ETHW), a hard fork of Ethereum maintained by a group of Proof-of-Work (PoW) miners, skyrocketed to $150 as the merge event for Ethereum approached during the last week.
However, since then, the forked token has lost all of its gains and is now trading for less than $6.
BlockSec had warned of an ETHPoW token replay exploit and allegedly received an additional 200 ETHW after sending 200 wrapped ETH (WETH) across a bridge on the Gnosis chain.
1/ Alert | BlockSec detected that exploiters are replaying the message (calldata) of the PoS chain on @EthereumPow. The root cause of the exploitation is that the bridge doesn't correctly verify the actual chainid (which is maintained by itself) of the cross-chain message.
— BlockSec (@BlockSecTeam) September 18, 2022
As reported by a cybersecurity firm on Sunday, after repeating a signal from the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain on the ETHPoW blockchain, an attacker was able to get an additional 200 ETHW tokens.
ETHPoW Huge 40% Dump
The current price of ETHPoW is $5.97, with a 24-hour trading volume of $175 million. In the last 24 hours, ETHPoW has increased by 11.47%, and ETHPoW has decreased by more than 40% in the past seven days.
CoinMarketCap currently ranks #2657, with a live market cap of not available. The circulating supply and the maximum supply are both unavailable.
ETHW Price Chart – Source: Tradingview
ETHPoW has already entered the oversold zone, and bulls may enter previously dumped ETHW to capitalize on additional gains.
Just hours after Ethereum completed its historic transition to proof of stake, ETHPoW, the network’s competing fork designed to maintain proof of work on a forked version of Ethereum, went live with its mainnet on September 15.
And we finalized!
Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
With the Ethereum Merge, Ethereum PoW (ETHW) is a planned hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain, a group of anonymous (both in size and name) ETH miners who stand to lose if the switch to PoS is implemented to support Ethereum PoW.
Grayscale Investments Distributes Ethereum PoW Tokens
Grayscale Investments, a leading digital asset management firm, announced the sale of all ETHPoW tokens acquired by Grayscale Ethereum Trust and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund when Ethereum switched to PoS consensus on September 16. The management organization will sell tokens worth approximately 3.1 million ETHPoW.
Following the incident, the community accused Grayscale of dumping the water, igniting a firestorm of resentment. In the same press release, Grayscale Investments addressed the issue of the ETHPoW market’s lack of liquidity.
Our funds $ETHE & $GDLC have passively received the rights to forked ETHPoW tokens. To the extent it is practicable, we will look to sell these tokens & distribute net cash proceeds to record date shareholders.
Read our release for important details: https://t.co/0subq36to0— Grayscale (@Grayscale) September 16, 2022
According to the company, since Ethereum’s PoS network went live on September 15, there has been uncertainty about its availability on any platform and the level of liquidity within. Furthermore, Grayscale claims that the token’s high volatility highlights the difficulty in predicting the price at which it will be sold.
BlockSec Discovers the ETHPoW Token Replay Exploit
The Ethereum PoW blockchain experienced a replay exploit, according to a cybersecurity firm that reported the vulnerability on September 18, with the attacker receiving an additional 200 ETHW tokens after repeating a message from the proof-of-stake chain on ETHPoW. According to BlockSec, the attack occurred because the bridge did not adequately validate the cross-chain message’s true chainID.
Had tried every way to contact Omni Bridge yesterday.
Bridges need to correctly verify the actual ChainID of the cross-chain messages.
Again this is not a transaction replay on the chain level, it is a calldata replay due to the flaw of the specific contract. https://t.co/bHbYR4b2AW pic.twitter.com/NZDn61cslJ
— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official (@EthereumPoW) September 18, 2022
According to the ETHPoW blockchain development team, the attack targeted the bridge’s contract vulnerability rather than its network. The development team also stated that they have attempted to contact Omni Bridge since September 17 to notify them of the risks. Unfortunately, Omni Bridge did not respond quickly enough to a feedback request.
The PoW fork has only been operational for a few days, and an early exploit may impact its future adoption. Furthermore, the token’s value has dropped since the exploit was discovered.
Should You Buy ETHPoW Now or Wait?
Many Ethereum miners wanted to keep mining, so they formed a team led by Chandler Guo to work on the development of ETHPoW and ETHW. Despite some difficulties, their hard fork is now operational and down 40% in the previous 24 hours.
Eric Wall, chief investment officer at Arcane Assets, claimed that ETHPoW miners could not maintain the chain at current ETHW rates. Nonetheless, major cryptocurrency exchanges such as FTX and Huobi have listed ETHW. Furthermore, BitTrue has launched an ETHW-based liquidity staking service that pays depositors 6% annually.
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