A critical consensus vulnerability in the Ravencoin network has put several days of transactions at risk, causing the cryptocurrency’s price to plummet to an all-time low on Wednesday and prompting exchanges to halt RVN transfers.

Data from CoinGecko indicates the cryptocurrency fell to $0.002754, marking a drop of approximately 22% from its 24-hour high of $0.003529. During the ensuing sell-off, trading volume surged above $18 million before moderating to around $9.6 million. At the time of writing, RVN had staged a minor recovery to approximately $0.00284.

Details of the Network Vulnerability

The Ravencoin project issued a statement on Tuesday explaining that the exploit allowed vulnerable nodes on the network to accept invalid blocks. The first known instance of this issue was identified on Friday at block height 4,487,776. The project added that similar invalid blocks were generated after the flaw was demonstrated on the mainnet.

Mining Pools Attempt a Solution

In response to the crisis, mining pools 2Miners and RavenMiner are constructing a competing version of the blockchain. According to the Ravencoin project, these two pools control a majority of the network’s total hash rate. Their new chain is being built to explicitly exclude the exploited branch, starting from the point of the first invalid block.

Potential for a Major Reorganization

If the chain created by the miners becomes the dominant one, the network could experience a reorganization process lasting for about three days. Ravencoin has warned that this would cause transactions confirmed after block 4,487,775 to be reversed. The project also noted that these reversed transactions might not automatically return to the mempool or be mined again.

Following this guidance, the project recommended that exchanges suspend all deposits and withdrawals until the blockchain has stabilized. In reaction, the exchanges Upbit and Bitget have suspended RVN transfers. Upbit, however, has kept trading for the asset available on its platform.