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Any block you are working on has a reference to the latest block in the network. So, every miner starts from scratch once a new block is added - the 49% pool do

Any block you are working on has a reference to the latest block in the network. So, every miner starts from scratch once a new block is added - the 49% pool doesn't have any advantage compared to the 51% pool. Each miner takes a bunch of transactions and chooses a previous block B1 to build on, then starts hashing. If some other minerB advertises a new block B2 based on B1 that includes different transactions before minerA, then minerA can throw away all the work it did, and start from scratch on B3 based on B2. But minerB will probably already be working on its own B3 - and has every chance to win again.

jimmydorry 4y ago
Except, that minerA can't build off block B1 because it has transactions in it that it doesn't agree with. minerB just has to keep trying to find blocks to put the censored transactions into, while minerA is fighting against the rest of the miners to outpace them. This only really becomes possible at much higher thresholds, e.g. 70/30. Meanwhile, the community will see what is happening and steps may be taken to either soft-fork or hard-fork the bad actors off the network.