Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Learning & News => Further Education => For Beginners => Terminology => Topic started by: Mounty on July 01, 2018, 11:57:48 AM
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A 51% attack is a situation where more than half of the computing power on a blockchain network is operated by a single entity or group, which gives them complete and total control over the network.
Things that an entity with 51% of the computing power can do:
Halting all mining.
Halting and manipulating all interpersonal transactions.
Double Spending using singular coins over and over (this simply means that they can spend same coin/token money twice by deleting transactions from the Blockchain records).
the cost for doing a 51% attack on a specific blockchain is based on calculation by site below on 1/7/2018:
Name Symbol Market Cap Algorithm Hash Rate 1h Attack Cost NiceHash-able
Bitcoin BTC $109.65 B SHA-256 38,259 PH/s $483,816 1%
Ethereum ETH $45.83 B Ethash 231 TH/s $314,888 4%
Bitcoin Cash BCH $12.73 B SHA-256 4,538 PH/s $57,382 10%
Litecoin LTC $4.60 B Scrypt 282 TH/s $47,811 6%
Monero XMR $2.10 B CryptoNightV7 484 MH/s $16,599 14%
Dash DASH $1.91 B X11 1 PH/s $12,299 45%
Ethereum Classic ETC $1.65 B Ethash 11 TH/s $15,484 78%
Zcash ZEC $700.54 M Equihash 570 MH/s $47,236 12%
Bytecoin BCN $549.28 M CryptoNight 489 MH/s $574 113%
Bitcoin Gold BTG $457.08 M Equihash 19 MH/s $1,611 345%
Dogecoin DOGE $290.12 M Scrypt 208 TH/s $35,339 9%
Bitcoin Private BTCP $230.57 M Equihash 6 MH/s $464 1,199%
MonaCoin MONA $124.57 M Lyra2REv2 2 TH/s $2,096 318%
Electroneum ETN $76.00 M CryptoNightV7 76 MH/s $2,613 89%
ZenCash ZEN $73.68 M Equihash 62 MH/s $5,175 107%
GameCredits GAME $40.95 M Scrypt 2 TH/s $290 1,042%
Vertcoin VTC $38.64 M Lyra2REv2 757 GH/s $644 1,033%
Ubiq UBQ $34.66 M Ethash 200 GH/s $272 4,430%
ZClassic ZCL $32.39 M Equihash 29 MH/s $2,363 235%
Unobtanium UNO $32.35 M SHA-256 4,459 PH/s $56,384 10%
Bitcoin Interest BCI $31.34 M Equihash 2 MH/s $171 3,259%
Litecoin Cash LCC $28.83 M SHA-256 18 PH/s $222 2,603%
Gulden NLG $28.48 M Scrypt 1 TH/s $232 1,300%
Einsteinium EMC2 $27.39 M Scrypt 110 GH/s $19 16,218%
https://www.crypto51.app/
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Very good information in the field of mining. This will be very helpful for beginners about the term. So when mining has understood this situation. Thanks for the information.
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Attackers can interfere with the process of recording new blocks. They disrupt the network and render it insecure. The bad actor could reverse transactions so as to engage in the nefarious act of double-spending.
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Great explanation and spot on.
The era of random 51% attack is far approaching its end. At least to bitcoin and lots of top altcoins. The costs to launch a successful 51% attack for BTC is much more higher than it was back in 2018 and now, it is almost not feasible anymore. And also most projects taking to PoS algorithm is a stumbling block to 51% attack. The network are much more secured.
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A 51% attack is a situation where more than half of the computing power on a blockchain network is operated by a single entity or group, which gives them complete and total control over the network.
Things that an entity with 51% of the computing power can do:
Halting all mining.
Halting and manipulating all interpersonal transactions.
Double Spending using singular coins over and over (this simply means that they can spend same coin/token money twice by deleting transactions from the Blockchain records).
While I am exploring the forum I found this thread and I just wanted to say that this isn't accurate in terms of definition.
A 51% attack doesn't necessarily give control of the network completely, there has been lot of instances when a single mining pool of Bitcoin network crossed 51% but they chose to be loyal and focus on the block rewards instead of tampering and altering the network.
And also about double spending the attacker can spend the coins twice but its much more complicated since it requires precision to fork the chain by creating a separate private blockchain and then quickly switch to the other branch (the longer chain) to render the original transaction invalid.
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And also most projects taking to PoS algorithm is a stumbling block to 51% attack. The network are much more secured.
Pos is not as secure as pow. Proof of stake algorithm is kind of centralized, and validators with a huge amount of staked coins become so powerful in the network and in deciding which tx's should be confirmed. It is easy to see how Ethereum moved from pow to pos and became much more centralized.