Litecoin 51% attacked?

[freequant]

I wonder if the recent drop of price has anything to do with the fact it was revealed that a sizeable part of the hashrate is composed of huge solo miners like BigCpuMiner...
If it is the case, it is good news because that means we have just got rid of our most  short-sighted speculators.

In retrospect, Litecoin is bound to attract the business of large CPU pools like owners of cybercafes, idle data centers, botnets, reseach clusters and cloud operators.
While having one single such large CPU pool control most of the hashpower would be worrisome, having several is a huge advantage for the safety of the coin as it will grow the hashrate to record high, and make E2C-style attacks pretty futile.

If my understanding is correct, BigCpuMiner, while he has a sizeable chunk of the hashrate, doesn't control the majority of it.
It is likely that we already have two or three such large solo miners, in which case we are already safer than without them.

That's a great thing. I am looking forward to seeing other CPU pools join the party.
Thanks BigCpuMiner for choosing Litecoin!

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[jjiimm_64]

I agree with this..  I am personally ~1% of the 'other', or 'unknown' with 230Mhash.  There are probably plenty like me.

[Clipse]

I agree with this..  I am personally ~1% of the 'other', or 'unknown' with 230Mhash.  There are probably plenty like me.

HAHA, 230MH, wow you litecoin donkeys can really type with shit on your fingers

[jjiimm_64]

I agree with this..  I am personally ~1% of the 'other', or 'unknown' with 230Mhash.  There are probably plenty like me.

HAHA, 230MH, wow you litecoin donkeys can really type with shit on your fingers

yep...  fat finger fred here.....  should be 230 Khash

[illpoet]

so as a solo miner does that mean i am a member of "the dark pool"? that is soo awesome! do i get to kill innocent ppl or anything like that? or at least corrupt more cpu's into quitting pools and coming over to "the dark pool"? i'm not really sure what a 51% attack is, i think maybe it has to do with politics?

[smoothie]

Hmm interesting thread.

[Electricbees]

Always good to see the community still acting hostile to Scamcoin... I always get a kick out of these threads... 

[LoupGaroux]

Ain't hostile... they drove the FUD short bus over here and started broadcasting fear and loathing about a non-issue, non-event load of silliness, when they really could have spent the time far more usefully fixing their own business. Ah, but why deliver on your incessant promises, ridiculous statements, and deluded ego-maniacal boasts when you can try and create an "Issue" to deflect attention from your own shortcomings.

We just pointed to the simple minded folks, and reminded them that they forgot to fact-check, think or reason anything out before giving birth to their little FUD-baby.

[ThiagoCMC]

Well... I hate to admit but, now, the Litecoin total haspower is "10.16 MH/s" but, sometimes, it reaches 30MH/s!!
Can be nothing but, how to identify a blockchain split (51% attack?!) automatically if it happen?!

[ThiagoCMC]

I really like the idea of a CPU-only coin, but, do we really need it right now?!

There are very few people who know and are interested in Bitcoin, and even fewer people who are interested in Litecoin but, there are many people wanting to destroy the good things as Litecoin (aka CH).

[tacotime]

Now that it's the holidays and people have turned off their computers, the botnet has collapse by 33% and now only makes up 50% of the hashing power 

http://pool-x.eu/net

[DeathAndTaxes]

I really like the idea of a CPU-only coin, but, do we really need it right now?!

There are very few people who know and are interested in Bitcoin, and even fewer people who are interested in Litecoin but, there are many people wanting to destroy the good things as Litecoin (aka CH).

GPU hostile chains are a wet dream for botnets.  Bitcoin isn't a GPU chain.  It is an open chain.  It happens to be that AMD GPU currently rule the kingdom but that will change.  In time FPGA will replace GPU.  The specialization in hardware means the average botnet is competing at a significant disadvantage. 

[localhost]

Now that it's the holidays and people have turned off their computers, the botnet has collapse by 33% and now only makes up 50% of the hashing power 

Or maybe it's just that for some reason the botnet switched to FBX
http://allchains.info/

[Syke]

Botnets will drive all cpu chains into the ground by chain-hopping. They'll mine one chain, driving the difficulty up slowly, while the difficulty on the other chains drop. Then, they'll switch to the lower difficulty chains and wait for the non-mined chains to drop in difficulty. All the cpu-chains are very chain-hopper friendly.

[wknight]

Botnets will drive all cpu chains into the ground by chain-hopping. They'll mine one chain, driving the difficulty up slowly, while the difficulty on the other chains drop. Then, they'll switch to the lower difficulty chains and wait for the non-mined chains to drop in difficulty. All the cpu-chains are very chain-hopper friendly.

Not sure how its going to run it into the ground.. only reason they hope is because of coin value.. if a coin doesnt have any value then it wont be mined. So its up to people that buy it.

[ThiagoCMC]

Soon the difficulty drops, the Litecoin hashrate rises up like a rocket!!
I would love to control a botnet... Just for fun... lol
But I have no idea how to do that... Damn lucky bastards...  ^_^

[P4man]

Seems like some botnet operator just discovered litecoin. Difficulty more than doubled.  Ouch.

[Coinbuck @ BTCLot]

Seems like some botnet operator just discovered litecoin. Difficulty more than doubled.  Ouch.

Ouch.. And Litecoin value is low atm ...

[P4man]

Both were to be expected. Difficulty was going to explode because of how easy it is for a botnet, or even just some IT guy in a large company to have 100s or 1000s of cpus mining for him. Im surprised ltc difficulty stayed so low for so long.  Price was also more or less predictable,  you cant use litecoins for anything, far less even than bitcoins, and the supply is increasing quite rapidly.

Anyway, litecoin mining has been relatively profitable for some time. But now; havent done the math yet, but it looks like its pointless today. And thats a problem for litecoin I think; if only botnets are worthwhile...

[DeathAndTaxes]

Which IMHO is why CPU only chains are dubious.   The largest botnets are in the hundreds of thousands of nodes range.  Currently LTC is too small to attract that kind of attention but if it did gain any traction profitability for anyone without free electricity and hardware would be crushed to zero by progresssively larger and larger and larger botnets.

Bitcoin isn't GPU "friendly" it is an open algorithm.  Today it happens to be AMD GPUs.  Tomorrow it might be FPGA.  As CPU gain more stream processing capabilities and potentially even encryption/hashing specific instructions they could move past FPGA and GPU.  In time we may see dedicated encryption processors being used or even custom chips (sASIC, ASICS, etc).

By keeping the algorithm open the network will always become more and more efficient.  Some people might think it isn't fair that their favorite hardware can't mine Bitcoins but "fairness" is a dubious value.  Efficiency is what matters.