Although blockchain is considered to be a safer system than the traditional finance sphere, it is also prone to hacking and thefts. Money always attracts fraudsters who invent new tricks to access it. With digital currency gaining popularity around the world, experts claim that millions of tokens and coins are stolen daily!
The cryptocurrency industry is very volatile. Say, today you see one ENJ price, and tomorrow, it differs by 50% percent. However, it’s not the only source of instability. You can see the news about some major hacks in headlines – there is hardly any exchange website not hacked at least once through the history of its existence.
Yet, investors are still willing to continue investing money in cryptocurrency and keep their coins in online wallets. Uncertainty and possible risks do not scare them at all. Even though markets can be affected by such events, they are short-lived. And, surprisingly, hacks and attacks on the digital currency sphere can bring a few benefits.
Attacks as security tests
When a serious hack occurs, companies and cryptocurrency developers, or people directly or indirectly connected with it start analyzing the security concerns themselves. For example, this happened when Qihoo 360, the Chinese cryptocurrency company noticed a serious security flaw in the EOS platform in 2018.
That encouraged Justin Sun, Tron founder, to review and rethink the security features in his own company. Tron released the new statement about its security policies and priorities, especially the ones concerning the security of the platform. Thus, while hacks may not necessarily affect such aspects as the Gemini price chart and QTUM exchange rates, they motivate developers to take measures and improve security.
Attacks and development
EOS and Tron are only a few crypto-projects that have been forced to respond to the security threats based on others’ mistakes. In fact, the number of projects that have suffered from attacks and took measures is huge. Hence, since crypto hacking always takes place and hackers find ways to crack new technologies, it will always inspire developers to evolve and introduce more sophisticated security measures.
This is the same “natural selection” approach. The strongest survive leaving technically weak coins behind. If a coin/blockchain/project is not designed to deal with cyber threats, it will get distinct pretty soon – hackers will easily find a way to clean the wallets outs. Only the most secure coins and tokens survive, and they have to develop continually adapting to the growing dangers.
According to Christian Ferri (CEO at BlockStar), ‘today’s hacks will turn into tomorrow’s security solutions’. Yes, it affects the platform at first and has a lot of negative consequences. However, we learn about our mistakes, and hacking drives development in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Bugs are fixed, flaws are eliminated – this is the way to perfection and massive cryptocurrency adoption.
Amy Wan (co-founder of Sagewise) supports this point of view. She claims that despite all hacks and frauds, there is always a place for the community of crypto enthusiasts. However, blockchain and crypto will become mainstream only when the fundamental issues are resolved. The blockchain environment has a long way to go yet, and users need more transparency and stability to trust their money to this very industry.
Following Tron’s suit, many crypto projects acquired the practice of discovering bugs and potential security flaws. More companies introduce the same strategy and perform timely tests to prevent major hacks. Although these tests aren’t likely to stop hackers from their vicious attempts, their chances of successful frauds decrease to a great extent.
This way, project developers secure not only their platforms – they contribute to the development of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. Since many blockchains and crypto projects have an open-source code, methods of bug fixing and innovative security features might be implemented elsewhere. Thus, the security of the entire digital space increases.
Without total security, digital cryptocurrencies would not be so popular today. The ever-growing stability of the crypto environment makes up for massive adoption – people need stability along with the innate flexibility and freedom. Sounds absurd, but while crypto hacks are taking place, we can sleep soundly knowing that the industry doesn’t stand still but continues evolving and getting safer day by day.
