Ravencoin falls 19% as consensus flaw risks four-day rollback

Ravencoin fell 19.1 percent to $0.0029 after a consensus flaw let invalid blocks onto the network, risking a four-day transaction rollback.

The project disclosed the vulnerability Tuesday, saying the first invalid block appeared at height 4,487,776 at 15:44 UTC on Aug. 7, according to a statement on X. Mining pool 2Miners traced the root cause to the KAWPOW block header's nHeight field, which was never checked against a block's actual chain position, allowing attackers to bypass full proof-of-work verification and produce blocks at a fraction of the normal cost.

Two pools controlling most of Ravencoin's hashpower are rebuilding the chain from block 4,487,775, the last block before the exploit. 2Miners identified 96 affected blocks out of 2,089 examined between heights 4,489,527 and 4,491,615, while a sample of blocks mined before Aug. 7 found none affected. The project said it asked the pools to restart from a more recent point to limit history at risk, but they declined.

If the recovery chain becomes dominant, transactions confirmed after block 4,487,775 could vanish from accepted history. Some may return to mempools and be mined again, but Ravencoin warned this is "not guaranteed." Exchanges have begun responding: Upbit suspended RVN deposits and withdrawals citing the network issue, Bitget halted transfers for wallet maintenance, and Bitvavo suspended deposits and withdrawals as a precaution.

RVN's market capitalization fell to roughly $47.3 million on about $11 million of 24-hour trading volume, CoinGecko data shows. The token is down 77 percent over the past year.

2Miners shipped an emergency patch, version 4.6.1.1-hf1, that rejects blocks whose declared header height differs from their actual chain position starting at 4,487,776. The patch also adds a checkpoint at block 4,487,775 and rebuilds chain state when damaged index data prevents a node from continuing. First restart after patching can take several hours, as the software replays about 4.49 million blocks and 28 million transactions.

Ravencoin's official GitHub notes said a combined core release patching both the KAWPOW problem and a separate asset transfer quantity overflow bug is not yet available. Maintainer Hans Schmidt recommended using the 2Miners code for the mining issue until a combined patch ships.

This is not Ravencoin's first consensus-level breach. In 2020, attackers exploited a flaw that let roughly 315 million unauthorized RVN be minted before it was fixed. The current episode differs — it concerns proof-of-work validation and competing chain histories rather than excess issuance — but it lands on a network that has already had to rebuild trust once.

The next milestones are a stable dominant chain, wider adoption of patched software, and a combined upstream Ravencoin release. Until then, the project's guidance is for exchanges to keep transfers suspended and for users not to treat recent confirmations as final.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.