One of the largest Chinese mining pools has suffered a denial-of-service cyberattack. Earlier it was reported to attract 3% of the network from its rival AntPool and start Bicoin Classic testing.

The information about the DDoS attack came from a F2Pool representative at Bitcointalk forum trend. No other details were provided, neither on the source of the attack, nor on the targeted pages.

Due to the lack of official information, Reddit and Bitcointalk users a eagerly embracing various conspiracy theories offering explanations for the cyberattack. Some of them link the DDoS raid with F2Pool's claims to withdraw its support for Core's SegWit roadmap.

“This happened first with XT. Now it's happening with Classic. Coincidence?” wrote Reddit user 1337btc.

Others suggest that it can be associated with the fact that F2Pool lured about 3% of the network of another Chinese miner Antpool, after the launch of Classic tests. According to blockchain.info, F2Pool increased drastically its hashrate, raising the share from 26% 4 days ago to 36% as for the last 24 hours.

“I guess it's stratum.f2xtpool.com:3333 is what get DDoS-ed, so if they have a higher hashrate now is kinda irrelevant,” suggested Reddit user RussianNeuroMancer.

There were some users who did not see any coincidence at all in the occurred attack.

“Mining looks having been getting DDoS'd for as long as here have been mining pools. This isn't anything new,” believes Reddit user satoshicoin.

On 25 February, F2Pool started testing Bitcoin Classic mining, albeit only via a special port (stratum.f2xtpool.com:3333), which means that F2Pool users are not yet allowed to mine Classic for real. Earlier the Chinese mining pool threatened to leave the SegWit agreement due to the change of one participant's signature. F2Pool urged Adam Back, President of Blockstream, to explain why he had changed his position title in the roadmap signature from “president” to “individual”. After that Back changed back his signature to President of Blockstream in the list of roadmap signatories, but did not offered any explanations.

Elena Platonova