When it comes to the estimated possibility of a , while there's great news for some networks, several networks have a reason to be worried.
After , we decided to re-visit both the vital discussion of 51% attack vulnerabilities*, and specific coins we have discussed previously in 2018 and 2019, to see how these have fared over the course of almost a year. Besides the eight previously discussed coins, we introduce two more interesting cases.
The results were quite representative of the realistic situation, one may say, as four of the listed ten coins have strengthened up, while the defense of the rest has dwindled since April last year. It goes to show that this is another pricey element of the Cryptosphere that can change quickly and that there's no time to rest in keeping the defense up against it.
As a reminder, a 51% attack happens when a person or a group gain the control of the majority of mining power on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain network, meaning that they can double-spend and reverse transactions, preventing other users from mining. It doesn't, however, allow the attackers to other's coins. While major distributed networks such as and are safer due to their sheer size and are commonly a lot more expensive to attack, smaller networks have fewer participants and lack that layer of protection.
Here's how the theoretical costs of one hour attack have changed for some of the PoW coins since April 2019:
: +82%
The 51% attack cost:
- December 2018: USD 275,613
- April 2019: USD 375,502
- January 2020: USD 682,993
BTC price change in a year: +158%
Market capitalization: USD 164.1 billion
