Zcash, the privacy-focused Proof of Work Blockchain, is being attacked by spam.
Blockchain technology can offer free transactions thanks to (public) facilities, but there are transaction fees due to non-spam and abuse. Low fees, as in the case of Zcash, become the target of attackers.
Spam Attacks on Zcash Blockchain
According to a Twitter post by blockchain analyst Jameson Lopp, a large number of spam transactions were carried out on the Zcash Blockchain.
The attacker abuses Zcash’s privacy-protected processes. It adds hundreds of output values to protected transactions that have proven to be very data-intensive. As a result, the size of the Zcash Blockchain has increased dramatically to over 100 GB.
Somebody's having fun spamming the zcash blockchain and tripling its size to over 100 GB. Rough estimate is that this attack is costing them ~$10 a day in transaction fees. pic.twitter.com/D8EB1niju3
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) October 5, 2022
Although Zcash does not have any downtime, the rapidly growing size of Blockchain has caused problems for Nodes’ ability to sync with the network. Chain records show that the situation has only recently been brought to public attention, as it has been going on for months.
Sean Bowe, an engineer at Zcash’s core development firm Electric Coin Company, said:
“At this point, there seem to be only two problems with spam: It inflates the chain size and makes it harder for wallets to sync.”
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