Unknown attacker(s) controlled over 51% of Aeternity's hash power on December 5-8, enabling double-spend attacks. The attacker deliberately reorganized blocks and double-spent 29 million Æ coins across targeted exchanges (OKEx, Huobi, Gate.io, Binance). A subsequent January 8 attempt to repeat the attack was detected and blocked by community members.

Aeternity (AE) was attacked by 51% yesterday. According to core members of the Aeternity community, the 51% attack caused a loss of more than 39 million AE tokens. The official team is solving the problem. The main damages are exchanges and mining pools. Exchanges are concentrated in OKEx, Gate, and Binance. In this regard, Aeternity Chaohua Community Moderator "February Honghong" said that 51% attacks will not create new tokens. He can understand it as copying a fake token from the attacker and sending it to Exchange withdrawals are often the unlucky ones, and mining pools are the same. Therefore, 51% attacks are not technical vulnerabilities. POW itself is such an operating mechanism, so the team will not settle claims.