Bitmain is close to controlling 51% of the Bitcoin network

in #bitcoin7 years ago (edited)

Bitmain has dug 42 percent of Bitcoin in the past week and is moving closer to controlling 51 percent of its network hash strength.

Bitmain is about to control 51% of Bitcoin's network strength
In the past week, Bitmain hardware maker has dug 42% of the total volume released on Bitcoin. In that BTC . com and AntPool 2 mining pool of Bitmain owned, accounting for 26.6% respectively and 15.3% of network hashing power.

Bitmain has an advantage over its competitors because they manufacture excavators and at the same time use them. Excavators include integrated circuits (ASICs) dedicated to digging Bitcoins at a faster rate than high-end GPUs.

Bitmain also runs mining mines where miners can dig together and reduce the cost of operating the device - as well as providing cloud computing services that allow other miners to lease power. exploited from camps.

Bitmain also participates in digging Bitcoin Cash (BCH) with their ASIC devices - because BTC and BCH run on the same SHA-256 algorithm . If Bitmain stops digging the BCH and instead uses 100% of the resources for digging BTC, they can reach about 45% of the total hash strength in the Bitcoin network.

Bitmain's hash strength is close to 51%. Theoretically, this would allow Bitmain to perform a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network to control transactions or execute double spending .

The fact that 51% of people in the world of e-money seem to be worried about it is related to Blockchain 's decentralization and immutability . What happens if Bitmain achieves 51% computing power and how to keep Bitmain?

This will not be the first time a company is capable of controlling 51% of its computing power. By 2014, the Ghash company had surpassed the 51% threshold and caused great controversy in the Bitcoin community at the time.

The solution Ghash proposed was to require miners to move resources to various mining pools so that they would not be concentrated in one place. Ghash also asked any company to fall into the same situation in the future should also do so. However, this is different from Bitmain because they are a big Bitcoin digger and Ghash is a collective of many small miners.

Another possible solution would be to change the Bitcoin Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm . This is very difficult to implement because of security issues. Previously, Monero changed the algorithm to make the community split because of changes in the goals and vision of the project.

It seems we do not need to be scared when Bitmain performs a 51% attack even when they cross the threshold, as they have no incentive to do so. The biggest risk, however, is the ability of Bitmain's system to be hacked from outside or overwhelmed within Bitmain.


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