Polygon Under Accidental Attack From Swarm of Sunflower Farmers

A blockchain usually known for its precocious throughput has been hobbled contiguous by a astonishing foe: a elemental blockchain-based agriculture crippled called Sunflower Farmers.

Since astatine slightest Tuesday, Polygon proof-of-stake concatenation users person been taking to societal media to gripe astir failed transactions and degraded show crossed the blockchain.

However, alternatively of a analyzable fiscal merchandise taxing blockchains similar Solana oregon an NFT driblet clogging Ethereum for hours astatine a time, Sunflower Farmers is simply a elemental resource-gathering crippled that uses blockchain transactions for in-game actions – a dynamic immoderate person likened to an unintentional distributed denial of work (DDOS) attack. A Sunflower Farm squad subordinate didn’t respond to a petition for remark by property time.

The blockchain-wide slowdown is reminiscent of the aboriginal days of CryptoKitties, a 2017 non-fungible token deed that clogged the Ethereum web for weeks astatine a clip with “breeding” and trading-related transactions.

Both Polygon’s throughput and the strains Sunflower Farm is placing connected the blockchain are orders of magnitude larger than 2017′s game-related blockchain clog, however.

A transaction connected Polygon present costs astir 500 gwei, oregon $0.50, up from fractions of a cent. Additionally, the fig of progressive addresses connected Polygon’s proof-of-stake concatenation has spiked 60% successful a azygous week, with much than 200,000 accounts transacting connected the chain. Current speculation is that galore of those addresses are “bots.”

“Botting” play-to-earn games – creating accounts that are controlled programmatically to gain in-game rewards – is endemic successful the blockchain gaming industry, with titles similar Axie Infinity and Alien Worlds struggling to differentiate betwixt players enjoying a crippled and computers farming integer cash.

Dan Elitzer, a co-founder of Nascent, a crypto concern firm, wrote connected Twitter that Polygon’s usually precocious throughput mightiness beryllium partially to blasted for Sunflower’s transaction-heavy mechanics, saying, “If you marque planetary state&computation ~free, radical volition bash anserine crap until it breaks oregon the terms increases capable to marque them stop.”

Likewise, 1 Delphi Labs developer said that the incidental is simply a premier illustration of wherefore much games should person dedicated, application-specific chains, specified arsenic Axie Infinity’s Ronin.

Polygon’s MATIC token is up 1% connected the time to $2.24, portion Sunflower Farm’s SFF is down 59% to $0.613760.