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Title: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: LiveFinanciallyFree on April 17, 2021, 05:09:44 PM Is there any measure in place to protect against and recover from a 51% attack by a big enough actor?
I'm specific talking about the spawn camping attack as envisioned by Vitalik Buterin here https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html Quote In a proof of work system, if your chain gets 51% attacked, what do you even do? So far, the only response in practice has been "wait it out until the attacker gets bored". But this misses the possibility of a much more dangerous kind of attack called a spawn camping attack, where the attacker attacks the chain over and over again with the explicit goal of rendering it useless. In a GPU-based system, there is no defense, and a persistent attacker may quite easily render a chain permanently useless (or more realistically, switches to proof of stake or proof of authority). In fact, after the first few days, the attacker's costs may become very low, as honest miners will drop out since they have no way to get rewards while the attack is going on. In an ASIC-based system, the community can respond to the first attack, but continuing the attack from there once again becomes trivial. The community would meet the first attack by hard-forking to change the PoW algorithm, thereby "bricking" all ASICs (the attacker's and honest miners'!). But if the attacker is willing to suffer that initial expense, after that point the situation reverts to the GPU case (as there is not enough time to build and distribute ASICs for the new algorithm), and so from there the attacker can cheaply continue the spawn camp inevitably. Title: Re: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: Pmalek on April 17, 2021, 05:25:52 PM I read a little about this in the past. The first thing that would be needed for a successful 51% attack is millions of ASIC miners. Now we arrive at the problem where the attacker would get these devices from. Companies like Bitmain can't produce enough to satisfy the demand. Everything is pre-ordered and I don't see how someone could get their hands on a few million miners.
Let's say the attacker succeeded in acquiring them. He now needs enough electricity to power them all and cooling equipment to prevent his factory from going up in flames. That's a constant and huge cost. Sooner or later, he will run out of funds to finance the attack, and the network will start recovering. Even with a successful attack, he can't go through the blockchain and randomly steal people's coins. He can double-spend his own transactions depending on what the depth of them are. I am not an expert in 51% attacks, but this is what I remembered from many other threads in the past including one started by myself. Title: Re: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: LiveFinanciallyFree on April 17, 2021, 05:46:26 PM I read a little about this in the past. The first thing that would be needed for a successful 51% attack is millions of ASIC miners. Now we arrive at the problem where the attacker would get these devices from. Companies like Bitmain can't produce enough to satisfy the demand. Everything is pre-ordered and I don't see how someone could get their hands on a few million miners. Let's say the attacker succeeded in acquiring them. He now needs enough electricity to power them all and cooling equipment to prevent his factory from going up in flames. That's a constant and huge cost. Sooner or later, he will run out of funds to finance the attack, and the network will start recovering. Even with a successful attack, he can't go through the blockchain and randomly steal people's coins. He can double-spend his own transactions depending on what the depth of them are. I am not an expert in 51% attacks, but this is what I remembered from many other threads in the past including one started by myself. What if the bad actor is not a single actor but a state and there goal is to kill the network by making it useless. If BTC reaches 1 million USD per BTC (2026 Prediction according to the stock-to-flow model) it is entirely possible. Russia, India, Turkey or any state with a failing fiat would want to attack BTC if the prize is attractive enough. Was there any development regarding a respond to a 51% attack? Title: Re: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: Pmalek on April 17, 2021, 06:08:24 PM But you are forgetting that the prize of Bitcoin would drastically fall in the event of such an attack. If Bitcoin were to rise to $1 Million, which I doubt, that wont be the value of it when the network gets attacked. And I repeat. That state (the attacker) can't use its hashpower to revert my transactions or your transactions. They can double-spend their own, but the more confirmations those transactions have, the more expensive the attack will become.
Title: Re: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: LiveFinanciallyFree on April 17, 2021, 06:17:02 PM Can they use their hash power to transfer the bitcoin from my wallet and yours to their wallet?
Title: Re: What's the network plan in case of a 51% attack? Post by: NotFuzzyWarm on April 17, 2021, 09:57:31 PM Can they use their hash power to transfer the bitcoin from my wallet and yours to their wallet? Only if you give them your private key(s). You cannot send anything from a wallet without them. |