Like a lot of us, I discovered the details of blockchain at the beginning of this year. I work in the media Industry which means i'm lucky enough to have breaks between contracts.
I decided to lock myself in a room and study it.
I found many great things about the blockchain, and its security seemed its killer application. But as mining becomes solely the job of specialists, the 50% attack becomes a genuine threat.
For those of you that don't know, the 51% attack refers to the ability of anyone that controls more than 51% of the bitcoin blockchain to control it at will. This may sound like something from the movie'The matrix', but its only now that it is becoming a potential reality.
The security of bitcoin relies on miners solving increasingly complex mathematical problems in return for coins. In the early days, this meant that lot of computers on the network validating transactions. But its become pointless to mine this on home computers. So 3 companies virtually run the entire system.
If they decided to work together, they could control the system in the very near future.
For me this is an issue, that hasn't really been addressed.
Does anyone else know if we should be worried?