Tonight’s geographical region season finale is titled “Fifty-One p.c,” and per the trailer for the episode, it options a crazy twist focused on what’s known as a fifty one p.c attack. this can be once Associate in Nursing organized cluster of cryptocurrency miners attain a majority on a blockchain network, that permits them to carry the network prisoner and disrupt it in varied ways that. On the show, varicolored Piper’s enemies begin connection the blockchain network till they reach a fifty one p.c agreement, which provides them the ability to “delete all of our users, all of our developer apps, crash our coin. this may be the top of varicolored Piper,” explains Dinesh.

Source

The fifty one p.c attack will exist within the planet and has been deployed against smaller coins like inert gas and Shift, that ar clones of the additional common cryptocurrency Ethereum. each were attacked by a similar cluster, that calls itself the fifty one Crew. Once the cluster control a majority of each coins, it then sent their creators a ransom note, stating that serious injury would occur to inert gas and Shift if they weren’t paid. this {can be} a true threat; a bunch of coin miners that management quite fifty p.c of the network can create disturbance by stopping payments between users, or reverse bound completed transactions, in order that it might look as if they still had the coins they spent.

For smaller coins particularly, redaction transactions on the general public ledger are often damaging as a result of it ruins the legitimacy of all transactions — one thing that would all right kill the coin. It’s a drag that doesn’t have a precise answer as a result of such miners ar taking advantage of the localised means the network is made.

Source

But Cornell cryptologist Emin Gün Sirer tells The Verge that fifty one p.c attacks can’t do quite the maximum amount injury because the geographical region episode suggests. whereas messing with a coin like this may crash it, it wouldn’t permit attackers to “delete all of our users, all of our developer apps” as Dinesh suggests.

“Miners at fifty one p.c or additional have heaps of powers, however they are doing not have the power to vary the particular rules of the system, nor will they usurp funds,” Sirer explains, “They will rewrite the present blockchain in an exceedingly restricted fashion: they can't introduce transactions that don’t exist already, they'll omit any group action that they require, and that they actually cannot amendment any of the present rules.”

Source

Sirer suggests that the exaggerated power attributed to the attack ar simply a small amount of dramatic license. “Sometimes, for an honest book, Hollywood can take liberties with the technical facts on the bottom. i believe we've one amongst those things here.” geographical region includes a long history of raising real problems within the technical school community, although generally exaggerated for impact. Last week, its penultimate episode highlighted glorious points concerning Bitcoin, and although this week’s episode could be a very little less correct, it still points out a big concern. The fifty one p.c attack isn’t extraordinarily well-known outside of the cryptocurrency scientist community and it will recommend a doubtless serious flaw in utterly localised networks. For individuals attempting to try and do business on those blockchains, it’s a drag price acknowledging.

Would you like some points?

Then comments and also Follow me