Twitter: @kristophermt

Verge Currency (XVG) has hit the news this week for a reason some would consider “negative news”, however strip away the drama and hash-tagged topics that tend to blindly fuel social media, and the reality is: this is just another day at the office in the world of crypto. While Blockchain technology has begun to affirmatively plant its feet into our daily lives, we have to remind ourselves what it actually is so that we can better understand the technical complexities involved in creating and maintaining such a revolutionary technology.

Simply put, Blockchain is a series of encrypted blocks that essentially have depth (also known as the “chain”), where each block is a series of computations processed by computers that are spread across a network all over the world. These blocks utilize extremely complex cryptography that is improbable and nearly impossible to undo. With the strength and protection that blockchain provides, vulnerabilities are few and far between.

As some of the most talented minds have united to further enhance and develop this technology for the world and for the greater good, there are always a few bad actors looking to exploit minor vulnerabilities within an ecosystem. In most instances the crosshairs point to any and all cryptocurrencies with the greatest potential for continuous growth.

Last week Verge Currency stepped into the spotlight of a targeted attack, resulting in a solution which required a hard fork to happen at block 2042000. The exploit was related to one of the mining algorithms — Scrypt. While internet chatter continues to focus on a rumour that the fork was accidental, Sunerok responded to the question across multiple social media channels describing the decision to hard fork. The core team and community members attempt to correct the misinformation being discussed on certain platforms.

“The first change was to update the drift time to 30 seconds, which is our current block time. People thought that was a math error, because they do not realize we have 30 second blocks”. — Justin Vendetta (Sunerok)

Blockchain mining hacks can happen as we have already seen with other cryptocurrencies such as, Ethereum (who also forked to solve their issue), Litecoin, Bitcoin, Monero, and several others. The integrity and technology of any of these coins have neither suffered nor faced any issue in future growth. As a matter of fact, these “hacks” essentially highlight what needs fixing and provides an opportunity for any coin or token to further strengthen its network and technology, and effectively that is what Verge has done.

Within any growing industry, new challenges and issues are often encountered during stages of successful accomplishment, however what separates the weak from the strong is how these are dealt with and how quickly a top priority problem is resolved. When faced with such a challenge, Verge reacted the way any reliable top contender should. In the past, the above-mentioned cryptocurrencies took weeks to solve their own respective issues (what some would consider a fair amount of time), in this case, Verge (XVG) managed to implement a patch within 72 hours, including prepared updates for the wallets. The team truly came together during this process — from development, marketing, tech support, community management and longstanding community member support — the united efforts of all provided clear insight into just how resistant Verge can be when facing adversity. Sunerok (@justinvendetta), a man of few words, additionally found extra time to jump in and out of discussions providing some clarity on updates while he worked around the clock. The team remained in constant contact with its community via social platforms and is still working tirelessly to provide the correct information to those who have still not been made aware of what happened and why.

Verge was extremely impressed with the response time from Bittrex and Binance after a call was placed informing them of what was happening. They took immediate action and proactive measures to provide protection to all accounts and transactions. With so many exchanges popping up these days, unparalleled support like that is crucial to the ongoing success of cryptocurrency. This was also the case for all mining pools, as they have a direct line of communication to the team at all times. Verge Core team welcomed the discussion about all available details related to the solution throughout the entire process. As a testament to XVG’s potential growth, the market did not react negatively aside from brief periods of volatility, with the overall price continuing to rise on speculation of a major upcoming partnership. The partner-to-be was apparently made aware of the issue immediately and were in fact impressed with Verge’s response time in providing a solution. Large corporations are no stranger to challenges of similar nature and were very understanding of what needed to be done. Justin (Sunerok) confirmed that the partnership is still on track for its April announcement.

Needless to say, while “blogger news” circulates spicy headlines, ranging from positive to negative in order to target their specific audience, Verge has remained neutral in their response and continue to express that a focus on performance, technology and community is of paramount importance. Verge plans to continue to adapt and evolve in preparation of achieving mass adoption and is clearly proud of its supportive community.

When it comes to the crypto industry, I believe everyone should take the time to conduct their own research and uncover the facts, only from there can the discussion begin. The rest is merely noise of an excited industry where all falsities will eventually be filtered out by persistent progress.

For more information about Verge, please visit www.vergecurrency.com

[April 9th, 2018]