Crypto exchange Gate.io to refund $200k to users affected by 51% attack on ETC

Cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io has announced that it will cover losses of around 40,000 ETC (approximately $200,000), which its users suffered due to the recent “51% attack” on Ethereum Classic.

In an online post, the company said that its research has confirmed that the 51% attack happened successfully.

Earlier this week, major cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase, Poloniex and Kraken suspended all ETC transactions, withdrawals and deposits after detecting a deep chain reorganization of the ETC blockchain.

Gate.io said that its analysis identified 7 rollback transactions. It further said:

“Four of them were created by the attacker transferred 54,200 ETC in total. It happened between 0:40 Jan.7, 2019 and Jan 4:20 Jan.7, 2019 UTC for about 4 hours. All the transactions were confirmed normally on the ETC blockchain and became invalid after the blockchain rollback.”

“It caused about 40k ETC loss due to this attack. Gate.io will take all the loss for the users.”

Importantly, the exchange said that it has identified three of the attacker's ETC accounts:

“0xb71d9CD39b68a08660dCd27B3EAE1c13C1267B10

0x3ccc8f7415e09bead930dc2b23617bd39ced2c06

0x090a4a238db45d9348cb89a356ca5aba89c75256”

In the wake of the attack, Gate.io said that it has raised the ETC confirmation number to 500 and launched a new strict 51% detect for enhanced protection. It has also recommended the ETC development team and the community build a new consensus mechanism to protect against such attacks.