51% attack now Possible by the Top 3 Mining Pool Operators

[Khaos77]

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[Kakmakr]

There are no need to cover up anything.    Just go back in the history and look what happened when GHash.IO had more than 51% of the hashing power. Did they use that to attack the network? No they did not... Why did they not do that? --> because in the long run they would have lost a lot more than what they would have gained by doing that.

https://www.coindesk.com/ghash-io-never-launch-51-attack

Satoshi designed this whole technology to keep people honest, because it is in their own interest to do that. Now, go away ZEITCOIN shill and follow the sheep to the slaughter.   

[blckhawk]

Even though it's not likely to happen, it is still indeed possible. However, I don't think such attack would be conducted, as early as of now. Even if it is possible, the amount that they would possibly get from another bull run would be larger, and the possibilites are endless, rather than one-time profit that won't last that long.

However, I became quote interested on the link you posted. Collaborative proof-of-work seems to be a solution on removing pools which somehow creates a centralized system themselves. If the distribution made by mining pools nowadays could be integrated on the blockchain, then it could remove monopolies in mining and possibly increase the control to the people rather than smaller groups of individuals that control these pools.

[odolvlobo]

Keep in mind that colluding in a 51% attack is not in a pool's best interest. If the pool is caught (or even suspected of) trying a 51% attack, members will leave the pool and it will fade into obscurity. Take a look at what happened to ghash.io just because it went over 50%!

[pakhitheboss]

Why even some of us were bothered in responding to this Bitcoin hater? We are only encouraging him to again create a nonsense post like this in the future.

Again and again, we are all having the same conversation. It is his belief that it will happen someday, so let him believe it. No one can change his thinking. Therefore we should stop responding to him.

[mk4]

Why even some of us were bothered in responding to this Bitcoin hater? We are only encouraging him to again create a nonsense post like this in the future.

Because there are other less-educated readers here on Bitcointalk, that could potentially be swayed to the other way by bad criticisms like this one especially if no one makes a decent counter-argument. Making counter arguments is the least we can do because threads like this aren't going to be deleted by admins(which is a good thing).

[Linkkoin]

Legally operating mining pool operators would not risk their reputation with a 51% attack. It would be a kiss of death to the company, risk of imprisonment for its owners and possibly a deadly blow to the cryptocurrency.

In the case of bitcoin - it would mean REAL nuclear winter for cryptocurrencies, including wiping out 90+% of all cryptos we have.

[puertorikosena]

I think that the owners of mining pools are smart people and they understand that 51% attack is not advisable. This attack will allow them to earn a little single-pay. It’s much better to keep bitcoin network running and make money in the long run.

[alyssa85]

There are no need to cover up anything.    Just go back in the history and look what happened when GHash.IO had more than 51% of the hashing power. Did they use that to attack the network? No they did not... Why did they not do that? --> because in the long run they would have lost a lot more than what they would have gained by doing that.

https://www.coindesk.com/ghash-io-never-launch-51-attack

Satoshi designed this whole technology to keep people honest, because it is in their own interest to do that. Now, go away ZEITCOIN shill and follow the sheep to the slaughter.   

This. In the early days when bitcoin and alts were worth nothing, some anarchists thought it was fun to attempt 51% attacks to kill an alt.

But now bitcoin is worth over $8000, there is no incentive to kill it. Especially not if they have spent a lot of money on servers and mining rigs.

[franky1]

firstly
51% attack cannot change the rules of bitcoin. they cannot make more or less coins circulate they cant steal funds from people and put it into their own pockets.

all they can do is choose which transactions to include or exclude.
basically 51% is only a 'prolonged empty block threat'

secondly. although a pool may show as one entity, within the tag of a pool name is actually several facilities managed by several people.
there are some facilities that already prefer empty blocks and others dont, all while all being tagged as the same pool
there are some facilities that already prefer highest fee transactions and others dont, all while all being tagged as the same pool
there are some facilities that prefer segwit blocks(=>1mb) and others do legacy(=<1mb), all while tagged as the same pool
thus showing thre is not ven an agreement between the facilities of the same 'pool'

so even if 3 pools combine as over 50% its not just 3 men deciding. its actually more

and worse case. people can shift their asics to another pools as quickly as just changing an ip address in their asics configuration page

[logfiles]

Centralization has occurred. Decentralization is dead for bitcoin.

So now only 3 people secure bitcoin.

Only 3 people?
What a reckless and stupid statement?

According to your logic, 3 mining pools = 3 individuals.  
You forget that a pool consists of different miners who can choose not to be part of the said evil attack.
Are they gonna force all the miners to carry out the attack? 

[gentlemand]

This is very quaint. Bless OP's heart and all his little tootsies too. I want to grab a handful of cheek and give it a wiggle while ruffling his pudding bowl hair.

Pools have their power until the thousands of miners who use them decide they don't any more and that takes a few seconds to address. In another few years these pools will be long forgotten just like the previous ones.

[franky1]

i just chcked out the % of the pools that OP linked

https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools

and 22% is 'unknown'
basically pools that havnt even tagged their address to a known business/facility/brand

take just the recent block mined by 'unknown sources' (emphasis different pools)
3Bmb9Jig8A5kHdDSxvDZ6eryj3AXd3swuJ has been using this address since september and just looking at the recent fortnight only made  26 blocks out of 2016
thats not even 2%

another facility using address
3DPNFXGoe8QGiEXEApQ3QtHb8wM15VCQU3 only done 18 blocks since september... 18 out of ~5000 blocks. thats not even 0.3%

another facility using address
1MvYASoHjqynMaMnP7SBmenyEWiLsTqoU6  has been using this address since october and just looking at the recent fortnight only made  74 blocks out of 2016
thats not even 4%

but because these different facilities have not identified themselves they all just tagged as 'unknown' so silly people assume its one pool named 'unknown'

hint/emphasis 'unknown' is not a brand name

[nreal]

This of course is impossible, Firstly, the possibility of all three cooperating to attack together is impossible and ultimately they simply have no reason to do so unless they want to hurt their own interests.

[kryptqnick]

Keep in mind that colluding in a 51% attack is not in a pool's best interest. If the pool is caught (or even suspected of) trying a 51% attack, members will leave the pool and it will fade into obscurity. Take a look at what happened to ghash.io just because it went over 50%!

Luckily, this is the thing that makes the current situation safe. Businesses care about profits, and things have not been great for the last couple of years already. So miners are in desperate need of gaining more profit if they are in the business for a while. Trying to make a 51% attack is basically a suicide mission, so it's the opposite of what a company would like to do. I am not a fan of the whole centralized mining kind of situation, though. Because even having it as a possibility (if we really have it now) is a high risk... Relying on influential people behaving in a rational way can betray us.

[konfuzius5278]

Problem is even if we want to spread hashrate, its problem because at this hashrate small pools dont find any block.
So the highjer the hashrate of course the more centralisation.

I hear a mining farm starting be profitable start at owing 20 Mio USD at the beginning. Thats crazy much

[stompix]

https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools

Top 3 mining Pool Operators now have 56% control, so if they collude they can easily 51% attack bitcoin.

Centralization has occurred. Decentralization is dead for bitcoin.

So now only 3 people secure bitcoin.

Oh no, bitcoin is dead again!!!
But more importantly, math is dead! Totally!

I don't know in what reality
Poolin 14,9%
F2Pool 14,3%
Btc.com 13%
Equals 56% and not 42,2%

i just chcked out the % of the pools that OP linked
<>
and 22% is 'unknown'
basically pools that havnt even tagged their address to a known business/facility/brand
hint/emphasis 'unknown' is not a brand name

Franky1, this is one time I don't want to agree with you, even if I know you're right because I simply refuse to believe the OP is that stupid he actually believed unknown is a single mining operation. Although the historical graph is telling otherwise I really want to believe at the time he created the post the numbers were really saying something else.

Only 3 people?
What a reckless and stupid statement?

According to your logic, 3 mining pools = 3 individuals.  
You forget that a pool consists of different miners who can choose not to be part of the said evil attack.
Are they gonna force all the miners to carry out the attack?  

Not even that, even the pool itself is owned most of the time by multiple persons.
And in the btc.com case, there is also a board of directors, there are a lot of people involved, to think of pools like some counterstrike servers run by 12yo is hilarious.

[gmaxwell]

Did they use that to attack the network? No they did not...

Really bad example.  GHash.IO performed a finney attack, claimed they were hacked. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0

[Kyraishi]

This is just a stupid statement, no one has enough power/money to be able to perform a 51% attack, and it's killing off the golden goose, which isn't going to be profitable for the companies.

It's 3 mining pools, not 3 companies, and as other people have said, one of the pools is "unknown", which means all pools that haven't been identified are going to be seen as unknown, even though they are obviously not the same pool...

Fake news.

[konfuzius5278]

But whether they do or don't, You are trusting only 3 guys with keeping the bitcoin network safe from 51% attack.

Do you have proof that 3 people have full control over those pools?
1. Stockholder won't allow the pool to perform 51% attack since it's not profitable on long run, except if they desperately need short term profit
2. The engineer could put backdoor which halt pool operation
3. Miners could switch to another pool
4. Those 3 people can't prevent Bitcoin community from switching PoW algorithm

You insinuate that anyone knows that the pools are using a "modified" node where they mine on. Just 3 technican of the 3 or 4 pools need to know....

[aardvark15]

I don’t think it’s easy to coordinate that kind of attack at this point. You would need to get all three to agree to do something drastic an I just don’t think they will all cooperate to do that.

[pixie85]

I don’t think it’s easy to coordinate that kind of attack at this point. You would need to get all three to agree to do something drastic an I just don’t think they will all cooperate to do that.

It's not and even if 3 major pools could do it they won't because each of them has a lot to lose and not a lot to win.

If one of them decided to play the other 2 it could make them lose money and time trying to perform an attack, fail and compromise themselves. The operator who would expose them would make more money and gain respect of the community for exposing the attack. Also a stable network benefits all miners. If they were able to compromise it by attacking it would be like they bought a car and then burned it in public to get insurance money. It's not worth it!

[omfg.xekcep]

Well, if you complain ongoing things then suggest something. May be your advice will be priceless for the community. Unfortunately I am not an expert that is why I cannot check out the given information. By the way I could not understand if the former situation was better than now. In other words I am not sure whether your complaint takes place therefore I do not want to be unjust on discussing the particular situation. As far as I know hacker's attacks are inevitable anyway but how it works unfortunately I do not know

[franky1]

though the numbers of the pools is not actually 3 people with 51%. but more people/individuality.
a few people still dont get the point that even if its 1-3 people in such a scenario doing the attack
the most that would occur is the pool becomes selective over what transactions to include or exclude.

so again for emphasis what can this attack do and cant do
1. CANT DO: change bitcoin rules
2. CANT DO: steal satoshi's stash or MTGox stash*

2. CAN DO: reverse recent confirmed transactions*
3. CAN DO: prevent new tx from confirming

this is because although going back 1 block rewriting what tx's is included and solving that block and building a new block ontop to catch up and then another block to ovetake and orphan off the top3 blocks of the public chain to replace for the attackers top 3 blocks. the further back the attacker goes the more time is wasted resolving old blocks while the public pools are building ontop the public chain

EG do simple dummy demonstration without the variables
 lets say its 60% hash dominance and lets put it into minutes attacker/public take to make a block
(attacker 8mins, public 12min)

A) block 1000 block999 blok1000 blok1001 blok1002 blok1003 blok1004 blok1005 blok1006 blok1007
P) block 1000 block1 0 0 1 block1 0 0 2 block1 0 0 3 block1 0 0 4 block1 0 0 5 block1 0 0 6 block1 0 0 7

as you can see it can take 7 blocks to go back just 1 block and then catch back up
go back 2 blocks can take 14 blocks to catch up
go back 3 blocks can take 21 blocks to catch up
go back 4 blocks can take 28 blocks to catch up

as for not going back to edit old blocks but instead just 'empty block' new blocks. an attacker is not guaranteed to always have the 8min 'luck' there are still times where other pools will be 'lucky' and beat the attacker pool to being first to broadcast a block

this is why although one tagged 'pool' looks like it has 14.9% and another tagged pool has 13% this does not mean the 14.9% pool is going to win every block and no other pool everwins again.. because the pools would be winning every block if that were the case. but its not. even pools with highest hashrate dont win all the blocks

(note to the anal knickpickers. yes i simplified the demo down. yes theres more variables involved. no need to shout the obvious. but the end result is the same. i dumbed it down to make it a simple explanation not a technical, ego chest thumping, nerd jargon attempt.)

[patroncito]

****WRONG****

[ilovealtcoins]

The difficulty is increasing and individual miners cannot afford the mining and financial power because they no longer profit from Bitcoin mining.  If the world's largest Bitcoin mines allied together to create a 51% advantage, it would be disastrous for Bitcoin.  This is entirely possible in the future.

[DarkDays]

https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools

Top 3 mining Pool Operators now have 56% control, so if they collude they can easily 51% attack bitcoin.

Centralization has occurred. Decentralization is dead for bitcoin.

So now only 3 people secure bitcoin.

I am sure the follow up posts will be claiming , they would never do that.  
But whether they do or don't, You are trusting only 3 guys with keeping the bitcoin network safe from 51% attack.
(Used to be 4 guys) So much for Trust-less.

Discussion to remove pooling as an attack vector is here :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5194239.0

But like most things here , the Bitcoin Religious Fanatics see no problems.  

Let the cover up posts begin.  

Pretty ridiculous statement to be honest. You could always say if X number of mining pools collude then they could launch a 51% attack.

In any case, if they were successful, then the network would simply blacklist the offending miners, and they would get away with a max of 1 double spend.

Not worth the effort. The bitcoin network is beyond the realm of 51% attacks now.

[dohh]

https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools

Top 3 mining Pool Operators now have 56% control, so if they collude they can easily 51% attack bitcoin.

Centralization has occurred. Decentralization is dead for bitcoin.

It is important not to forget, that you need 51% of hash power to succeed with 100%. You can have a very reasonable success rate from levels much lower already.

[poopsmear]

Is a 51% attack legal to do? Or is it illegal?

[dohh]

Pretty ridiculous statement to be honest. You could always say if X number of mining pools collude then they could launch a 51% attack.

In any case, if they were successful, then the network would simply blacklist the offending miners, and they would get away with a max of 1 double spend.

Not worth the effort. The bitcoin network is beyond the realm of 51% attacks now.

You sure, that you have understood the blockchain correctly?
If they succeed, they will "blacklist" all the remaining miners and alter the blockchain. Not vice versa. Duh.

[konfuzius5278]

Is a 51% attack legal to do? Or is it illegal?

For my opinion its legal. Its open source and no one can say this code is right or wrong.
You simple set up a node with your own rules. When you/people mine on it the 51% of hash rate, you make the rules !

When you double spend coins on an exchange its illegal. But the attack itself not.

[squatter]

Is a 51% attack legal to do? Or is it illegal?

This attorney did a legal analysis and found that 51% attacks are illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which could entail both criminal and civil penalties for the attacker.

That's just the word of a lawyer, though. Until legal precedent is actually set in the courts, we can't be sure what would happen.

[dohh]

Is a 51% attack legal to do? Or is it illegal?

This attorney did a legal analysis and found that 51% attacks are illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which could entail both criminal and civil penalties for the attacker.

That's just the word of a lawyer, though. Until legal precedent is actually set in the courts, we can't be sure what would happen.

No one will take this case, I assume. It would requite unreasonably big effort to disclose who is behind this kind of hacks. And even if it was, whole crypto space would lose its "anonymity" and collapse even faster than it will.

[squatter]

This attorney did a legal analysis and found that 51% attacks are illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which could entail both criminal and civil penalties for the attacker.

That's just the word of a lawyer, though. Until legal precedent is actually set in the courts, we can't be sure what would happen.

No one will take this case, I assume. It would requite unreasonably big effort to disclose who is behind this kind of hacks. And even if it was, whole crypto space would lose its "anonymity" and collapse even faster than it will.

Identifying the attacker should be trivially easy. Just look at who published the attack chain. Like the OP suggested, the attack would probably entail collusion among multiple pools since sourcing the hardware to independently attack the network would be nearly impossible.

Identifying and organizing a cohesive class of victims under a single legal jurisdiction sounds extremely challenging, though. The CFAA is an American law as well -- it's unlikely that Chinese pool admins, for example, could be successfully brought to justice under it.

[dohh]

This attorney did a legal analysis and found that 51% attacks are illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which could entail both criminal and civil penalties for the attacker.

That's just the word of a lawyer, though. Until legal precedent is actually set in the courts, we can't be sure what would happen.

No one will take this case, I assume. It would requite unreasonably big effort to disclose who is behind this kind of hacks. And even if it was, whole crypto space would lose its "anonymity" and collapse even faster than it will.

Identifying the attacker should be trivially easy.

That is bullshit. You are missing the essence of "distributed ledger." If the 51% attack succeeds, then the blockchain is altered and that is a new true version of the database.

[blandana]

Probably not illegal.  As much as anyone doesn't want that to happen it could happen.  I'm not sure how everyone would react though.  If bitcoin works trading wise still if it happens I'm sure everyone is just going to move on.

It would probably only be illegal if they started "messing" with transactions.  If it became a problem there are laws that would be broken somewhere probably but I'm not sure if it's illegal if a group "hashes" so much that if it cancels out other "block" discoveries that it's illegal.  Or something like that.

[alyssa85]

Is a 51% attack legal to do? Or is it illegal?

It's legal, and it's usually done to destroy a coin.

In the early days when alts were first being released, many were killed off by 51% attacks by bitcoiners who hated the thought of alts existing and thought that bitcoin should be the only crypto.

That's the reason why the only alt with sha256 is bitcoincash which didn't fork till 2018. The other alts adopted scrypt, which meant the bitcoin miners couldn't easily switch to mining alts and destroying them.

Back to the topic of discussion: it's unlikely that the top miners in bitcoin will attempt a 51% attack, because that would mean destroying their own business.