Identical genesis block with litecoin
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So there’s been a couple people on the btc-e trollbox mentioning (truthfully) that FTC shares the same genesis block with LTC, and as such is vulnerable to being hijacked by the LTC blockchain which is longer and since it uses the same genesis block, would replace the FTC chain.
http://explorer.litecoin.net/tx/fa3906a4219078364372d0e2715f93e822edd0b47ce146c71ba7ba57179b50f6 is the litecoin genesis block
http://cryptocoinexplorer.com:5750/tx/808267d4d2e63c1098b4caa198eebd8096b912164efa0afeb8fdee31d726a925 is the feathercoin genesis block.I understand why this may be a bad thing, but I fail to see how the blockchain itself would be taken over.
EDIT: So the person who claimed the vulnerability said there were no checkpoints, but looking at the source the checkpoints are clearly implemented. 4 of them so far, but for them to be effective people need to be running from a recently compiled version I assume.
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Bushstar is really the man to answer is for you, but from what I can gather the checkpoints have been in place from day one.
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The only way for that to happen is for a bunch of blocks to be premined, and the discussion of whether that happened or not has been a point of controversy as is.
The first checkpoint block apart from the genesis block, 22267, was added 5 days ago, but if you’re on an old build of the client, your only checkpoint is the genesis block.
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This is not a concern as we have checkpoints hardcoded into the clients so it would not accept another chain.
You can always start a new chain from the genesis block of any of the coins which will create your own version. It is the checkpoints that stop anyone from trying to force on a fake chain.
There is more information on checkpoints in the link below.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Checkpoint_Lockin
The secondary concern about old clients is mitigated by the fact that the majority of the hash power is on pools running the latest source code. When updating code I inform the pool operators.
I hope that this reassures you.
