51% attack vulnerability could be more possible than ever, here's why.

[acarli]

It occurred to me these last few days, that since the cost of mining is going down many mining facilities are turning off their mining equipment. Makes sense, the cost of the electricity is greater than the profit mining. A no-brainer. So, if we look at the distribution of the mining factions below:

From blockchain.com, url on the image.


Let's say all of them reduce their hash rate proportionally. That seems like a sensible thing to do. Now if the hash rate gets low enough, any of these groups (more likely 2 of them are needed) could turn on ALL of their hashing power and go for the 51% unexpectantly. What's to stop BTC.com and an unknown hash source from jumping in and exploiting the relative increase in cost of mining BTC? How could the other miners react fast enough? Look below and see the hash rate decrease from 60TH/s down to about 35 TH/s. Just by eyeballing this it starts to seem like a real possibility in the 15-20TH/s region?





Makes me wonder if some miners have already done the math. lol

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[ABCbits]

More than ever? Have you forget that GHash pool which was popular in past had more than 50% hashrate and they could launch attack anytime they want. They also could get away with non-obvious attack such as intentionally don't included transaction in a block.

Regarding your theory where multiple pool work together to launch 51%, they could do it anytime as they always have big hashrate percentage.
But IMO, Bitcoin is protected from 51% attack with game theory where these pools choose not to risk profit they could earn from mining Bitcoin where Bitcoin price might rise in future and losing trust they build for some years.

[bluefirecorp_]

I remember when a single mining pool had over 50% of the hash rate on the network, and that wasn't a major issue because the pool could be trusted.

[acarli]

More than ever? Have you forget that GHash pool which was popular in past had more than 50% hashrate and they could launch attack anytime they want. They also could get away with non-obvious attack such as intentionally don't included transaction in a block.
...

Nope, I did not know that. I don't think anyone would seriously do this. BUT.. the situation is different becuase now the game is relative hashing power, where there is unused hashing power sitting on the sidelines. This is a new dynamic right?

[ABCbits]

Nope, I did not know that. I don't think anyone would seriously do this. BUT.. the situation is different becuase now the game is relative hashing power, where there is unused hashing power sitting on the sidelines. This is a new dynamic right?

Yes, but 51% attack costs is still higher since ratio of BTC difficulty, ASIC efficiency and BTC price is worse compared with past event where a pool actually have 50+% hashrate.

Also, this topic has been discussed many times, so you should do some research to get more information/ideas.
One of recent discussion thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5072301.0;all

I remember when a single mining pool had over 50% of the hash rate on the network, and that wasn't a major issue because the pool could be trusted.

and i thought GHash was first pool with 50+% hashrate

[bitcoinfuck]

its just new pools who joins recently check there signatures, i forgot the page where i bookmarked them all

[BitcoinCurve~]

What people forget is there is far too many wealthy people invested in Bitcoin for the 51% to be viable. Anyone who is invested in Bitcoin would fight back if it became a problem. Its true that we've already had one entity with more than 50% computing power but it wasn't a problem because they didn't use it for malicious purpose. However if they did it would be quickly obvious and the balance would change very quickly as those invested in Bitcoin turn their computing power on to combat it. 51% isn't viable with a small investment it would probably cost millions to sustain control of the network. You would literally be taking on the whole network and everyone invested in it. Multiple pools combining their computing power to be a vast majority of the network would be a concern and would cost both sides millions to combat. I know it would be bad for the network and would cause instability in the price but it would be interesting to see the both sides battle it out. What could be a problem is when quantum computers come along and the network is attacked.

[worldofcoins]

Disregarding possibility of more or less, Fact in the past a few mining pools could combine and launch this attack, but they didn't!

Reason: I don't think they would want to risk the passive profit that they're making just by doing something foolish such as this.
Also, I'm not saying they will not do it unless there's an involvement of tens or thousands of bitcoins.

[Artemis3]

What's to stop BTC.com and an unknown hash source from jumping in and exploiting the relative increase in cost of mining BTC?

I don't think "Unknown" means a single entity. Do you assume that to be Bitmain? If we sum Antpool + BTC.com thats only 32,9 (from your graph).

Also as we can see from BTC.com, they have also lost hashrate together with the other pools:


Going from 9 to 6 Exa hashes per second, ie. they lost nearly 3000 Peta hashes per second in the last few months...

That said if you are a miner, consider switching to one of the smaller pools such as kano. It is safer and more transparent. It might pay less often (currently about every week or so), but in the long run it pays a tiny little bit more AND you help rebalance the network.

[mikeywith]

I always have these kind of debates with XRP army on facebook   , .

without any technical aspects of how hard is it to deploy a 51% attack on bitcoin. let us just simply take the economical point of view.

assuming that "XYZ" person/company have access to over 50% of the total hashrate ( which i am pretty sure "XYZ" does or at least had for quite sometime).

what are the financial rewards of performing such a very expensive attack on bitcoin?  

pretty much nothing but double spending ! ( there are other benefits which are not financial)

many people think that with 51% you can take everybody else's coins or create BTC out of thin air which is not the case.

now as we all (inclduing "XYZ") know that an attack on BTC will sink it's value and there will probably be no going back. so if XYZ have access to 51% hashrate , be it through pools or their own asics what so ever, it only means they are generating a shitload of money at the moment of owning that much of hashrate. should they attempt the attack they will be sitting in a first class of a plane going to rekt city with 1 way ticket. and i am sure someone with access to that much hashrate is only smarter than this.

some people might also argue that a company like bitmain might attempt an attack on BTC only to increase the credibility of BCH  which also does not make a lot of sense, BTC at least for now is the back-bone of crypto, if it fails then every other coin and token is going to vanish.

the only concern of mine is if a few governments combined  are willing to pay a lot of money to launch the attack simply because they see BTC as a major threat to their national or economical security.

[vit05]

If there is any suspicion of a 51% attack on Bitcoin, the big exchanges will wait for more confirmations in the transactions. Something like this would be noticed, and the news would be quickly expelled.

The real possibility of a 51% attack being made will only exist when the biggest benefit is something other than double transactions. Maybe when you have a group that wants to break the trust that people place in Bitcoin. Then this group could leave farms dormant or being used in other currencies until a time when the attack was possible.

It could not be a company since the financial logic of a return is unlikely.

[jackg]

Imo, pools like slush in particular are made up of miners that are more independent/non commercial. I’m not sur pe how much their hashtags has fallen but I doubt it’s fallen by very much when compared to the others.

This means the voters in the system are decentralised, if the hashtags keeps decreasing and slushpool started a 51% attack on the network, they would lose an immense a,punt of hashpoeer and would probably lose out as a result overall so it would be foolish.