An article by Zachary Mashiach, of Crypto IQ, has a very detailed analysis of the heavy plummeting token price of Verge.

As part of their series ‘The War On Shitcoins Episode 13: Verge (XVG),’ he explains why Verge has suffered such severe losses and how a plethora of issues plaguing the project would make it a not very attractive investment choice for investors.

The article begins in a positive note, repeating the fact that, Verge, unlike many current cryptocurrencies, did not have an ICO and open source code. The coin also had highly regarded anonymity features such as dual-key stealth addressing, integration of Tor in its wallets and also provided I2P tunneling. Mashiach admits that Verge had all the necessary ingredients for it to be an excellent privacy coin.

However, Verge’s problems initially started in April 2018 when attackers were able to implement a ‘Time Warp Attack.’ This meant attackers were able to set block timestamps one hour in the past. This resulted in the mining difficult dropping to the lowest possible, allowing the hackers a window to mine as many blocks as possible. The attacker profited 20 million Verge coins (XVG) worth $1 million at the time.

While the developers did try to implement a fix for the issues, it did now however work.

Around 22^nd May attackers were able to manipulate timestamps again to the lowest level and managed to steal $1.8 million XVG in a few hours.

The problem persisted, and a follow up remedial patch was insufficient as another attack occurred a week later.

Along with the time warp attacks, there was widespread speculation that a 51% attack had also manifested itself along with the existing attacks. This could be feasible as, during a time warp attack, the rapid mining of blocks could easily allow for a spending transaction and then the submission for a longer new chain with a non-existent transaction.

All of the above situations have caused Verge to switch from a POW consensus algorithm to a POS. However, this move would require Verge’s flexibility in regards to mining and would also concentrate power to a select few individuals who own the most Verge coins.

Verge’s plight is a great example of how consistent attacks and failure to solve the problem can lead to a massive turn-off to investors and significantly damage a once-promising project.

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