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It's a classic blockchain fallacy that a 51% attack allows you to print the underlying crypto at will. As for the developers, they could write code to print a
by everfree 3y ago
It's a classic blockchain fallacy that a 51% attack allows you to print the underlying crypto at will.
As for the developers, they could write code to print a billion bitcoins if they wanted to, but for it to take effect everyone's gotta agree to run it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 3y agoThe attackers could mint new coins under a new process and then force everyone to transition over by trading old for new. Holdouts will find that old-coin transactions never succeed, and will have no other choice except to walk away in financial ruin.
- everfree 3y agoIt's not entirely clear to me what you mean by "regime", but it seems most likely to me that if forced with a choice of two hard-forks: 1) Removing the attacker directly (PoS) / changing the hashing algorithm to remove the attacker (PoW) or 2) Submitting to the whims of the attacker it would be a no-brainer to just remove the attacker. Embracing an attacker-controlled chain seems like a strictly worse option than removing the attacker, no matter how messy. It seems like a choice between disruption or certain ruin. An attacker at that scale would certainly understand this game theory, and realize that if they attack, after some potentially very messy shake-out and serious temporary disruption, they will soon have no influence over the chain anymore.