Author: Melvin Carvalho 2013-04-05 09:30:38
Published on: 2013-04-05T09:30:38+00:00
On IRC, there was a discussion about a mining pool reaching 46% and the potential risk of a 51% attack. The suggestion was made that as the pool is decentralized, launching such an attack would not be possible. However, others argued that the pool owner has the power to choose what goes in the block, making it difficult to coordinate a 51% attack even with random non-colliding nonces. One participant suggested that creating random numbers on a GPU is hard, but others countered that creating just one random number and incrementing from there could still pose a threat. The question remains whether this is a serious issue or not. In terms of the mining pool's dominance, blockchain.info/pools shows the current distribution of hashpower among various pools. While a single pool having a majority share could potentially cause problems, the decentralized nature of the pool should make it difficult for anyone to launch a 51% attack. However, concerns were raised about the pool owner having control over what goes in the block, which could potentially allow them to manipulate transactions. Despite arguments about the difficulty of coordinating a 51% attack with random nonces, the possibility of a malicious actor creating one random number and incrementing from there cannot be completely dismissed. Ultimately, it is unclear whether this situation poses a significant threat or not.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T11:35:13.470920+00:00