Author: Melvin Carvalho 2013-04-05 10:13:23
Published on: 2013-04-05T10:13:23+00:00
In an email conversation, Melvin Carvalho raised concerns about a mining pool reaching 46% and the possibility of a 51% attack. Mike Hearn responded that double spends against confirmed transactions could be done even before reaching 51%. He also mentioned that while 51% has psychological significance, it is a self-defeating attack as it leaves a permanent record. However, there are other risks involved such as vandalizing the blockchain or manipulating the price downwards. Hearn suggested that there are other mining protocols available that allow people to pool without the pool operator being able to pick which transactions go into the block. Carvalho had earlier suggested that a 51% attack would not be possible on a decentralized pool, but others pointed out that the pool owner gets to choose what goes in the block. There were discussions around the difficulty in coordinating a 51% attack through random non-colliding nonces and the possibility of creating one random number and incrementing from there. It was suggested that as bitcoin's market cap grows, incentives to move the market will also grow. Although p2pool has problems dealing with FPGA/ASIC hardware, the market will ultimately decide which algorithm is used, and as a community, they can review the different mining protocols and order them in terms of risk.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T11:36:01.786382+00:00