A Weakness In Proof of Work

writerofage (57)in #hacks • 6 years ago

I recently stumbled onto a bit of information that really called out to me. Part of being a self-involved investor, is trying to see what else is there, what other factors are involved.

Lets take for example, Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Gold.
Bitcoin Gold recently underwent a 51% attack. This happens when someone running enough hashpower turns their computing power to a small hash rated coin. In this case, Bitcoin Gold uses the same algorithm as Bitcoin. Say 100 hashrate is being used to run BTC, and 5 BTG. Someone who is runnkng 5 BTC hash can switch to mining BTG and overpower the current hashrate.

This only matters if, the entity using the moved hashpower is capable of causing a double spending, or a duality within the mining blockchain. This forces the coin to choose one of the paths. Leaving the other, for history.

Essentially, a Development Coder hacks the system and reroutes the coins. The miners then must choose which blockchain to continue on.

Anything running off Sha-256 or the Bitcoin Protocol is incredibly open to these attacks.

Syscoin is one:
And as you can see here, some sold for 96 BTC!
I've no proof into the recent SYS trading, but it does run off of the BTC Sha256 algorithm.