Zen was hit by a double spend, or 51% attack, this last weekend. Criminals were able to get away with just over 23,000 ZEN from an exchange. This is certainly not a good event, but there have been some big misconceptions about what it really means, what we’re doing about it, and what this means for the project in the long run.

Within the first hour of the attack, our early warning system was tripped, the response team spun up, and we worked throughout the night. We contained the damage, our exchange partners took mitigating actions, and our marketing team put out this comprehensive community update that same morning.

This is the response of a professional team that knows what it’s doing, will use this as an opportunity to improve the entire industry, and will continue to press forward aggressively on delivering our promises to the community.

Note: I’d like to correct some comments made on video late in the evening with Crypto Lark – BTG issued a response to their own 51% attack quickly via the forum and also have been collaborating with Horizen (ZenCash at the time) on the attacks, so my deep apologies for the inaccurate statement. We’d like to thank them for sharing their experiences with us.