Should BTC.com and BTC.Top launch 51% Attack for Bitcoin Cash Community?
Matthew Lam May 27, 2019 10:00
Two Bitcoin Cash (BCH) mining pools – BTC.com and BTC.top recently conducted 51 percent attack to reverse another miner’s transaction. This is an attempt to prevent attacker from taking coins without permission due to the code update. The attacker took advantage of the bug unrelated to the code update, and caused the miners to mine empty blocks for a brief time.
Two Bitcoin Cash (BCH) mining pools – BTC.com and BTC.top recently conducted 51 percent attack to reverse another miner’s transaction. This is an attempt to prevent attacker from taking coins without permission due to the code update. The attacker took advantage of the bug unrelated to the code update, and caused the miners to mine empty blocks for a brief time.
Cryptoconomy Podcast host Guy Swann posted his tweets “When the unknown miner tried to take the coins themselves, http://BTC.TOP & http://BTC.COM saw & immediately decided to re-org & remove these [transactions] TXs, in favor of their own TXs, spending the same P2SH coins, + many others … So just 2 miners, in secret & w/ no trouble, took it upon themselves to remove 2 blocks w/ another’s TXs, & replace with their own.”
The 51 percent attack allows anyone or group holding the majority of hash rate to execute things such as rewriting the transaction history on network. The two mining pools – BTC.com and BTC.top both combined for 44% of bitcoin hashing power currently, according to Coin.Dance.
Although the 51 percent attack was carried out with good intention, not everyone agreed with the reversed transaction. A bitcoin developer named Kiarahpromises wrote in 17 May “To coordinate a reorg to revert unknown’s transactions. This is a 51% attack. The absolutely worst attack possible. It’s there in the whitepaper. What about (miner and developer) decentralized and uncensorable cash? Only when convenient?”
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