THE FEATURE Verge's Blockchain Attacks Are Worth a Sober Second Look The notorious 51-percent attack: it's the major fault in cryptocurrency protocols but it's rarely seen, especially among the most popular cryptocurrencies. Yet, in the past couple months, the exploit – whereby a single miner (or group of miners) takes control of over half of the network's total computing power and can then bend the protocol's rules in their favor – has been seen twice. And on the same blockchain. Indeed, verge, a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency recently propelled into the limelight by a partnership with popular adult entertainment site Pornhub, suffered two hacks perpetrated through 51-percent attacks that saw the attackers absconding with millions of dollars-worth of its native cryptocurrency, XVG. During the first attack in April (only a couple of weeks before the Pornhub partnership), the hacker was able to get away with 250,000 XVG. And during the latest in mid-May, an attacker was able to exploit $1.7 million-worth of the cryptocurrency from the protocol. According to researchers, the exploits are a product of simple changes to the underlying code which cryptocurrency protocols are typically built on – and the challenges of being able to predict what unintended consequences will arise from those changes. | 
