Re:Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in...
by Thorrez on Sunday April 18, 2021 @02:15AM
(#26850230)
That has nothing to do with rolling back or 51% attacks. A racing attack and a 51% attack are different things.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in...
by sillysaurusx on Sunday April 18, 2021 @02:47AM
(#26850345)
Oh, you're probably right. It seemed related because the further back an adversary wanted to roll back to, the more hash power they'd need to get ahead. But it's a different category.
I wonder if there has been an analysis of how much hash power you'd need relative to how many blocks in the past you'd want to roll back.
Re:Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in...
by Thorrez on Sunday April 18, 2021 @06:25PM
(#26857081)
That analysis is actually in the original 2008 bitcoin whitepaper:
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
If you have 51% of the power, you can roll back everything if you spend enough time on it. If you have 30%, you have a 4% chance of being able to catch up from 10 blocks behind, even if you spend infinite time on that specific fork.