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i wonder if these massive mining operations have enough power to cheat the system: couldn't they quickly compute a series of valid blocks with the cheated trans
by MichaelMoser123 9y ago
i wonder if these massive mining operations have enough power to cheat the system: couldn't they quickly compute a series of valid blocks with the cheated transaction if they band together? the longer chain of blocks would win against a shorter one.
On the other hand they would have a self interest to preserve the system, if trust in cryptocurrencies collapses then the big miners would have a lot to loose.
- lewi 9y agoCorrect. I think it takes only 3-4 companies to collude to 'attack' the network. But that' d knee cap the value of the currency. Which in turn would nuke their profits and render their capital outlays useless.
- rothbardrand 9y agoThis is a sybil attack and it would take wide collusion and would be difficult to pull off, and it would allow you to do what? Reverse some transactions that you had the keys for. It's really expensive attack to get back the $5 you paid for Starbucks. So you would want to do it with a multi-million dollar transaction. However, the thing is, anyone you pay a multi-million dollar transaction to is going to let it clear for more than just one block... probably for many blocks...before handing you the goods. Because everybody is aware of this risk. Chains reorganize anyway, just naturally when sometimes two blocks are found within the propagation delay. Trying to run ahead is very hard. Wallets like Electrum show one confirmation in red, and several in yellow and only after the chain has gotten extremely expensive to unwind will it show them in green.