Nano (XNO): Network at a standstill for days due to DDoS attacks

Originally posted here.
By: guido

Overview

Nano (XNO) was hit so hard by a DDoS attack on May 19 that transactions became impossible. An update that has now been applied should […]

The Post

Nano (XNO) was hit so hard by a DDoS attack on May 19 that transactions became impossible. An update that has now been applied should rectify the situation. But Nano is losing trust.

Nano (XNO) has found some use as an online payment method in gaming and for microtransactions elsewhere. But now Nano had to spread the Hios message via Twitter  last Thursday (May 19): DDoS attacks were critically disrupting the network, and a fix was in the works. In forums like Reddit , Nano users described the situation more dramatically. In practice, payments with XNO became impossible. In the crypto industry, DDoS attacks mean that a network is flooded with orders in a coordinated manner, bringing it to its knees. Nano had already experienced such an emergency in March 2021.

Nao founder Colin LeMahieu also mentions the incident from just over a year ago in his latest blog post  on the strategy for reliably preventing the major problem in the future. However, according to him, the V24 upgrade, which was actually intended for this purpose, is not yet ready and at the moment an update V23.1 is supposed to calm down the situation. This was circulated yesterday, Monday, and is apparently reaching Node operators gradually. Again on Reddit , users report a payment in XNO currently takes about 3 minutes to confirm.

Nano does not rely on a blockchain technologically, but the network is based on Direct Acyclic Graphs (DAG), a solution similar to that in IOTA’s Tanglenet. Since IOTA 1.5, a mechanism in Tanglenet has prevented microtransactions, which protects against spam and DDoS attacks, but also limits the possibilities for using IOTA.

Conclusion: Nano’s price curve collapses – DDoS attack damages more than just trust

For five days in a row, Nano was paralyzed in practice, and with it external services such as online casinos that use XNO as a means of payment. As far as is known so far, no direct financial losses were incurred. But a network like Nano, which aims to score with speed and low fees for online payment transactions, must see the incident as an absolute embarrassment – especially with the advance warning from the spring of 2021. Nano had only changed its abbreviation to XNO in November 2021 in order to meet international standards for “supranational” currencies, according to the blog post . But a currency like Nano (XNO) that unexpectedly becomes unusable for days seems less than mature.