Blockchain's Once-Feared 51% Attack Is Now Becoming Regular (telegra.ph)

Monacoin, bitcoin gold, zencash, verge and now, litecoin cash. At least five cryptocurrencies have recently been hit with an attack that used to be more theoretical than actual, all in the last month. From a report: In each case, attackers have been able to amass enough computing power to compromise these smaller networks, rearrange their transactions and abscond with millions of dollars in an effort that's perhaps the crypto equivalent of a bank heist. More surprising, though, may be that so-called 51% attacks are a well-known and dangerous cryptocurrency attack vector. While there have been some instances of such attacks working successfully in the past, they haven't exactly been all that common. They've been so rare, some technologists have gone as far as to argue miners on certain larger blockchains would never fall victim to one.

The age-old (in crypto time) argument? It's too costly and they wouldn't get all that much money out of it. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. NYU computer science researcher Joseph Bonneau released research last year featuring estimates of how much money it would cost to execute these attacks on top blockchains by simply renting power, rather than buying all the equipment. One conclusion he drew? These attacks were likely to increase. And, it turns out he was right. "Generally, the community thought this was a distant threat. I thought it was much less distant and have been trying to warn of the risk," he told CoinDesk, adding: "Even I didn't think it would start happening this soon."

Comments

Re:We need to smash the money printing machines.

[MasseKid]

While I agree with most of your statement, cryptocurrencies do provide a real service. That service is a non-centralized bank transaction. The real value of this non-centralized bank transaction is where the speculation comes into play. That all being said, I don't think see such a network as being sustainable as the cost of transactions is exponential over time.

Re:We need to smash the money printing machines.

[careysub]

The Netherlands in fact is number TWO in the world in food exports, as measure by value! $93 billion vs $150 billion for the U.S.

This is possible because the focus on high value vegetable crops (not cheap tonnage grains) and by having a large food processing industry. A lot of that value, is processing value-added, and may not even be from raw foods that The Netherlands produces itself, but imports.