Re:Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
by digging on Friday February 09, 2024 @11:44AM
(#39316819)
I'm not an expert here but my understanding is that even if a so-called 51% attack were to happen, it would only be meaningful as long as it could be sustained. The simplest case is a single tainted block, after which other miners could roll back by consensus. If a nation wanted to "permanently" take over >50% of the network, I believe the Bitcoin community would see that coming, and it would be a colossal investment of energy for a not-very-good chance of taking over. Bitcoin.
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Re:Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
by treyd on Friday February 09, 2024 @11:50AM
(#39316926)
> The simplest case is a single tainted block, after which other miners could roll back by consensus.
Invalid blocks are rejected trivially by any node as soon as it sees them. You can't "force" an invalid block to be accepted by throwing hashrate at it and miners don't need to do anything to make an invalid block be recognized as such.
The issue is on malicious actors trying to rewrite/replace recent blocks (to double spend, usually) which was the core innovation, but that also includes trying to censor txs or generally DoS the network by refusing to allow txs to be accepted.