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Ravencoin Chain Split and Hard Fork

Updated August 23, 2026. The chain has recovered. Payouts are off by default while exchanges catch up — you can switch them on for your own wallet.

Ravencoin went through a network-wide chain split. It hit every RVN pool, exchange and solo miner at the same time, not only us.

How to turn your payouts back on

The clean chain is healthy. Not every exchange and wallet service is. Some are still on the old chain or not fully synced, and a payout sent to one of them can sit uncredited, or show up and then vanish once their node finally reorganises.

That is why payouts stay off by default. The risk is not on our chain, it is at the far end. If you would rather have your coins now, you can switch payouts on for your own wallet:

  1. Open your wallet page. Go to ravenminer.com and enter your RVN address, or open the dashboard link you normally use.
  2. Select the Payout Settings tab. It is the same tab where you set your minimum payout threshold.
  3. Click Enable payouts for my wallet anyway in the amber box at the top of that tab.
  4. Enter one of your worker's external IP addresses. This proves the wallet is yours. Open whatismyip.com on the machine that is mining, or search "what is my ip". A local address like 192.168.x.x will not work — it has to be the public one, and that worker must have submitted shares to us.
  5. Tick the acknowledgement box confirming you understand the risk, then click Enable payouts.

That is it. Your wallet then pays out on the normal schedule, subject to your usual threshold and payout frequency. The setting is per wallet, not per worker, so you only do it once.

To pause again: same tab, click Pause payouts again and confirm with a worker IP.

Stuck? If the button does not appear, the IP is not accepted, or anything else goes wrong, message us on Discord and we will sort it out with you. The most common cause is entering a local address (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x) instead of the public one, or using an IP from a worker that has not submitted shares yet.

Before you switch it on

Check with your exchange or wallet provider that they run a patched node. Coins lost because the receiving wallet or exchange is unsynced are not something we can recover. Once a payout transaction is broadcast it is final — we cannot reverse it, resend it or refund it. Paying out to a wallet you control yourself is safer than paying out straight to an exchange.

If you are not sure, waiting costs you nothing. Your balance keeps accruing either way.

What happened

  • Since August 7, 15:44 UTC an attacker was exploiting a consensus flaw in the Ravencoin node.
  • The nHeight field in KAWPOW block headers was never validated, so blocks could be forged with almost no work behind them.
  • The first forged block landed at height 4487776.
  • Forged blocks stack onto the chain as if they were real, and they corrupt the node's block index, so an unpatched node stops syncing after a restart.

Where the pool stands

We mine the clean chain alongside the largest RVN pool and the rest of the patched network. The first block of the new chain, height 4487776, was found by RavenMiner.

The split itself is settled. The clean chain overtook the forged one and is now more than 13,000 blocks ahead of it, and our US and Europe nodes each hold close to 300 peers, up from a handful in the first days. What is left is the slower part: exchanges and wallet services updating their own nodes.

What this means for your balance

  • Blocks mined during the attack window are orphaned. This happens across the whole network, on every pool, not only here. That chain was never real, so its earnings cannot stand.
  • Everything you earned before August 7, 15:44 UTC is safe. Untouched, still on your balance.
  • Nobody goes negative. We reconciled every balance against the clean chain. Where the numbers did not line up, the pool covers the difference rather than pushing it onto you.
  • Your balance keeps growing while payouts are paused. Nothing you are owed is lost, whether you opt in or wait.

The official RavenProject release does not fix this

The release circulating as v4.7.0 does not fix this attack.

  • Its notes cover an asset transfer bug and two RPC fixes (sendmany, sendtoaddress).
  • Nothing in it rejects the forged blocks or resolves the split.
  • It ships as binaries with no source code. The release page says the commit hash and source "are not correct for this release".

If you run your own node, do not count on it to recover from this.

The fix that works

Run v4.8.0, published by 2miners on August 11. It is the current release and it replaces the earlier v4.6.1.1-hf1 emergency hotfix.

  • Rejects the forged blocks from height 4487776 onward
  • Checkpoints block 4487775 as the last clean block
  • Rebuilds the corrupted chainstate automatically
  • Carries the same fixes on top of the current upstream code, and adds the asset transfer overflow fix that the hotfix did not have

Upgrading is stop the node, swap the binary, start it again. No reindex. Coming from an unpatched node the first start replays the chain and takes several hours; coming from v4.6.1.1-hf1 it starts in under a minute.

All three of our nodes (US, Europe, Asia) run v4.8.0 since August 11.

Questions

Ask us on Discord or Telegram. We keep this page updated as the network recovers.