5 ms·
What would the absolute worst outcome of that attack be? Miners don't have the option of spending from addresses they don't have the private keys of; all they c
by once_inc 4y ago
What would the absolute worst outcome of that attack be? Miners don't have the option of spending from addresses they don't have the private keys of; all they can do is rewrite history to a certain extent.
Would it be bothersome? Yes.
Would a globally used bitcoin monetary base layer have complete backing of nation-states using it? Yes.
Would people be hesitant to transact during the attack? Probably.
None of these things are of immediate consequence, while the attacker spends its funds rewriting history and getting blowback from everyone online.
Then there is the issue of getting to 51% in the first place, and retaining that 51% once it is clear something nefarious is happening. Many miningpools are conglomerates of individual miners, who certainly have the option of switching to other parties at their whim.
I think proof of work is the only viable way currently known to man to ensure a fair, even monetary playing field at global scale. PoS is not proven, and Ethereum does not scale because it optimized for parameters that aren't relevant for a system that is supposed to be online for at least a century, if not longer.
- latchkey 4y ago> Then there is the issue of getting to 51% in the first place, and retaining that 51% once it is clear something nefarious is happening. ETC currently has a 6.5 day deposit confirmation time on Kraken because it has had multiple 51% attacks and that hold is even after ETC implemented mitigations [1]. These are not just hypothetical issues. [1] https://coingeek.com/ethereum-classic-implements-51-attack-defense/ https://coingeek.com/ethereum-classic-implements-51-attack-d...
- beaned 4y agoThe reason this is possible for etc is because it's a small chain nobody uses with blocks that can be mined with hardware from much larger chains. There is no larger compatible proof of work chain than Bitcoin.
- latchkey 4y agoCorrect. There can only be one top algo/coin per class of hardware. Once ETH PoS happens, ETC will be the top GPU coin (at least to start) and the deposit times should go back down again. One thing ETC has going for it is that the algo is the same as ETH. Very large farms will struggle to retune GPUs for different algo workloads. There is also the issue of different power requirements too.
- once_inc 4y agoThis makes me wonder if I should speculate on the future price of ETC rising right after the merge, because most miners will switch their hashing power to that chain.
- latchkey 4y agoMy theory is the price will jump up on the speculation and then head to zero as the large miners dump on dumb retail.