Bitcoin Protocol Vulnerability Could Lead To a Collapse 256
First time accepted submitter stanga writes "Cornell researchers unveiled an attack on the Bitcoin mining protocol
that enables selfish mining pools to earn more than their fair
share. In a technical
report the authors explain this
attack can be performed by a pool of any size. Rational miners
will join this pool to increase their benefits, creating a snowball
effect that may end up with a pool commanding a majority of the
system's mining power. Such a pool would be able to single-handedly
control the blockchain, violating the decentralized nature of the increasingly
successful Bitcoin.
The authors propose a patch to the protocol that would protect the
system from selfish mining pools smaller than 25% of the system. They
also show that Bitcoin can never be safe from selfish mining pools larger
than 33% of the network, whereas it was previously believed that only
groups larger than 50% of the network were a threat to the system.
The question is — can the miners operating today adopt the suggested fix and
dismantle too-large pools before a selfish mining pool arises?"
I wonder (Score:4, Funny)
Did the "selfish mining pools" us a Greedy algorithm?
I'll invest in bitcoin mining... (Score:1, Funny)
when the tulips start to bloom again.
Re:The Wild West (Score:5, Funny)
How can they be exciting? It already costs more in power bills than you make mining and you have to have specialist hardware (unless you're stealing cycles elsewhere or are a retard when it comes to money).
Parents are paying the electricity bills and buying the computers.