Ravencoin (RVN) is a proof-of-work blockchain forked from Bitcoin's code. It was built for one job: letting anyone create tokens and transfer them peer to peer. RVN is the native coin. You pay network fees in it, and you burn it to create tokens. The newest development came in August 2026. On 7 August someone exploited a bug in how nodes checked KAWPOW mining work. Over the next two weeks the network was rolled back about three days. On 19 August the project released Ravencoin Core v4.8.0, which every node operator is told to run.
The latest: the August 2026 consensus exploit
What happened
- 7 August 2026, 15:44:01 UTC. The first known invalid block was accepted at height 4,487,776, according to the mining pool 2Miners. The flaw was in KAWPOW block-header validation. Nodes did not check a header's declared height (
nHeight) against the block's real position in the chain. An attacker could set that height so nodes skipped full proof-of-work verification. 2Miners said such blocks were "orders of magnitude cheaper" to produce than honest ones. - Scale. Between blocks 4,489,527 and 4,491,615, 2Miners found 96 forged blocks among the 2,089 it examined.
- Side effects. Affected nodes could fail after a restart. Nodes still syncing could run into broken header sequences and stop catching up.
How it was fixed
- 10 August 2026. 2Miners released an emergency build, 4.6.1.1-hf1. It rejects any block whose declared height differs from its real position. It also sets a checkpoint at block 4,487,775, the last clean block.
- 11 August 2026. The Ravencoin project disclosed the flaw publicly. It warned that a recovery chain mined by pools could rewrite "approximately three days" of history. It also said transactions confirmed after block 4,487,775 might drop out of the accepted chain.
- 19 August 2026. Ravencoin Core v4.8.0 was released. The release notes say "all node operators should upgrade to this" and describe it as the same code 2Miners had released the week before. It patches two major bugs:
- the mining bug exploited on 7 August, which let a miner skip the DAG/GPU requirements; - an asset-transfer quantity overflow, which let anyone holding at least one unit of an asset create a huge number of extra units for themselves.
It also includes minor fixes to the sendmany and sendtoaddress RPC calls.
- v4.7.0 never took effect. v4.7.0 (June) already contained the overflow patch. It never activated on mainnet because miner signalling (BIP9) had not finished by the time v4.8.0 was needed. It does not fix the mining bug.
Where it stands
A 2Miners update dated 4 September 2026 says the clean chain, mined by pools holding most of the hash rate, overtook the forged branch. The update called it "thousands of blocks ahead" and said "the split is settled in favour of the honest chain." Block rewards from the abandoned branch do not carry over.
What this means in practice: run v4.8.0. Transactions confirmed only on the abandoned branch after block 4,487,775 may be missing from the surviving chain. Look them up in a block explorer that runs v4.8.0 nodes.
How Ravencoin works
Launch and distribution
- Launch: the genesis block is timestamped 3 January 2018, 17:11:34 UTC. That is nine years to the day after Bitcoin's launch. The project's own page gives the same date.
- Fair launch: the project says there was no premine, no ICO and no masternodes. It also says no coins were held back as developer or founder rewards.
- Name: the project cites a November 2017 post: "In the fictional world of Westeros, ravens are used as messengers who carry statements of truth."
Key parameters (from the Ravencoin Core source code)
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum supply | 21 billion RVN |
| Target block time | 1 minute |
| Initial block reward | 5,000 RVN |
| Halving interval | every 2,100,000 blocks (about four years) |
| Current block reward | 1,250 RVN, after the second halving at block 4,200,000 (January 2026, per mining-pool reports) |
| Proof-of-work algorithm | KAWPOW (activated 6 May 2020, 18:00 UTC) |
Mining: X16R, X16Rv2, KAWPOW
Ravencoin started on X16R. According to the project, dedicated X16R mining machines (ASICs) eventually became profitable. The community then switched algorithms twice, first to X16Rv2 and then to KAWPOW, to keep mining open to consumer GPUs. KAWPOW is the algorithm whose header check failed in August 2026.
Assets: the core feature
Anyone can create a token on Ravencoin by burning RVN. The source code sets the burn cost for each action:
| Action | RVN burned |
|---|---|
| Issue a main asset | 500 |
| Reissue an asset | 100 |
| Issue a sub-asset | 100 |
| Issue a unique asset (one-of-one token) | 5 |
| Issue a message channel | 100 |
| Issue a qualifier tag | 1,000 |
| Issue a sub-qualifier | 100 |
| Issue a restricted asset | 1,500 |
| Add a null qualifier tag | 0.1 |
Assets activated at block 435,456. Messaging and restricted assets activated together at block 1,092,672. The project's code repository lists NFTs, security tokens, gift cards and "fractional ownership of anything of value" as uses for assets.
Ravencoin has no general smart contracts. It keeps Bitcoin's UTXO model and adds token issuance and transfer at the protocol level. That makes it a specialised token ledger more than a general-purpose programmable chain.
Did the August 2026 Ravencoin rollback touch you?
Answer two or three questions to see whether you need to upgrade a node or check a transaction after the 7 August 2026 exploit.
Do you run a Ravencoin node yourself?
- Yes → next question
- No → next question
Is your node running Ravencoin Core v4.8.0, released on 19 August 2026?
- Yes, v4.8.0 → next question
- No, an older version such as v4.7.0 → Upgrade the node to v4.8.0 first
Was a transaction you care about confirmed after block 4,487,775, the last clean block before the forged blocks began on 7 August 2026?
- Yes, after block 4,487,775 → Check the transaction on the surviving chain
- No, at or before block 4,487,775 → Outside the rolled-back window
- Not sure → Check the transaction on the surviving chain
The v4.8.0 release notes say all node operators should upgrade. It patches the mining bug exploited on 7 August and the asset-transfer quantity overflow. v4.7.0 never activated on mainnet and does not fix the mining bug. After upgrading, check any transaction confirmed after block 4,487,775.
Transactions confirmed only on the abandoned branch after block 4,487,775 may not appear on the surviving chain. Look the transaction up in a block explorer that follows v4.8.0 nodes. Block rewards from the abandoned branch do not carry over.
The emergency fix set a checkpoint at block 4,487,775, the last clean block, and the Ravencoin project warned only about transactions confirmed after it. If you run a node, it should still be on v4.8.0.
This cannot look up your transaction or block. It follows the 2Miners pool and the Ravencoin release notes, and there is no official status update after 4 September 2026.
Who created it
The project credits Bruce Fenton, Tron Black and Joel Weight as the publishers of the whitepaper. The whitepaper PDF on ravencoin.org is dated 3 April 2018. Bitcoin Magazine described Fenton as a former executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation. Tron Black has been the project's lead developer and wrote its public posts on KAWPOW and on the 2020 incident.
Earlier security incident: 2020 minting bug
In early July 2020 the Ravencoin team disclosed that attackers had exploited a bug introduced in a "community code submission". They minted about 315 million RVN, roughly 1.5% of the 21 billion cap, on top of the 5,000 RVN allowed in each block's generation transaction. Tron Black wrote that the bug did "not allow the stealing of RVN or assets that you own and control, but the minting did create RVN that should not exist." Holders were diluted, not robbed: the extra coins had already been sold, so the cost reached every holder as inflation. Press reports at the time valued the minted coins at about USD 5.7 million.
That makes three serious consensus-level bugs in six years: the 2020 minting bug, the 2026 mining exploit and the asset-overflow bug. Each was found after release.
