Spam Suspected As Single Account Overloads Ethereum Network
It appears like the Ethereum network is once again experiencing a spam attack. A single account is sending and receiving transactions, therefore consuming 24.85% of the gas, gathered from the data provided by the Ethereum gas station. This was the peak value observed and subsequently the transactions started to gradually decrease their gas use.
In the past, increased activity has been associated with airdrops and other project related transactions, however, this time it looks like an outright spam.
A user commented the following on Etherscan, an Ethereum search tool,
What is this? It’s spamming the entire network. Looks like a PlayerBook clone, but makes no sense, it’s registering weird names.
Another user who investigated the transactions and noticed a pattern of repeated wallet addresses, said,
It’s a botted ring wallet system with nearly 150,000 to 200,000 ethereum in it. The bots translate random addresses to other random addresses and random amounts of eth to make them difficult to spot on block history. I don’t have the tools to tell you where it came from.
The Ethereum network is witnessing large transaction amounts in the last 24 hours, though below 700,000. The price of fast transactions were slightly raised, while, the safe cost of a transaction remains at $0.017. So far there is no indication of who is the entity who decided to spam the network with these gas-intensive transactions. The cost of the attack is estimated to be around $20,000.
This Ethereum overload that looks like a spam is not the only one in the cryptocurrency world. The EOS blockchain, that is often presented as an alternative to Ethereum, may also be experiencing a transaction overload.
The situation of fake network overloading and transaction costs is working towards creating a false impression of the cryptocurrency industry and the activities taking place in it.
See also Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Calls Out Spambots.
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