crazy_rabbit (OP)
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002
RUM AND CARROTS: A PIRATE LIFE FOR ME
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
April 19, 2013, 11:29:13 AM |
|
As was recently experienced by the small alt-coin Terracoin, it might be theoretically possible to attack bitcoin via the difficulty adjustment (intentionally or unintentionally) rather then just 51% of the chain. What happened with the first version of Terracoin was that someone with vastly higher hashing power got onto the network and drove the difficulty into the stratosphere.
The network ground to a halt as soon as they left the chain because there was no longer enough hash power on the network to solve blocks at the sky-high difficulty.
Theoretically something similar could happen with bitcoin. Already we have a large number of former Bitcoin GPU miners now mining Litecoin and litecoin has become quite expensive. There could potentially be some combination of circumstances (for example future generation ASIC miners) that bring such enormously large computational power to the network that the rise in difficulty pushes a large number of miners off of bitcoin onto another chain for profitability reasons. Then if this large miner were to leave the network suddenly (could be intentional, could be unintentional, such as accident, some sort of connection failure, etc...) the network would be left with a very high difficulty and too few miners powerful enough to solve blocks to bring the difficulty back down in a reasonable period of time. Confirmation times could grow intolerably slow.
Something to think about- it was done successfully and intentionally against Terracoin, and while it's a much, much, smaller network- the principle behind the attack is the same.
|