Re:How Blockchain Works
by qnmaster on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @07:49PM
(#18081215)
>Is that the point of mining? To make inserting hordes of cheap lying nodes impossible?
That's called a Sybil attack, and yes that's one of the reasons.
Mining also makes creating blocks have a real world energy cost. So rewriting history quickly becomes almost impossible as blocks are added. An attacker would have to have more than 50% of all mining power for a sustained period of time.
I suggest reading the Bitcoin whitepaper, it's short and sweet.
That's called a Sybil attack, and yes that's one of the reasons.
Mining also makes creating blocks have a real world energy cost. So rewriting history quickly becomes almost impossible as blocks are added. An attacker would have to have more than 50% of all mining power for a sustained period of time.
I suggest reading the Bitcoin whitepaper, it's short and sweet.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf