LogFAQs > #972991326

s0nicfan posted...

Deafening silence on the 51% attack vulnurability. I can only assume most people either aren't aware or are but pretending not to notice because it's a fundamental flaw in the underlying technology that nobody wants to talk about.

It is a flaw, but what does it take to execute a 51% attack? How likely is it to execute a 51% attack? For the BTC network, it requires some extreme resources or extreme collaboration between miners to execute.

What some protocols do to prevent this is to flat out centralize their protocol (for example by whitelisting node participants) until their network gets large enough where it would be too expensive to make attacking the network worthwhile. Of course this introduces the new concern of centralization. But it does generate the discussion and understanding that centralization-decentralization is a spectrum with the vast majority of projects having some levels of centralization. So what level of decentralization and centralization is good enough?