What It Means for A Blockchain to Suffer 51% Attack
Recently there has been some attacks on some blockchains. These cause some certain percentage of the network computing power also known as hash rate to be hijacked and controlled. So what is the meaning of 51% attack and some major consequences of it.
Lets break it down.....
Blockchain as the name depicts is a chain of blocks(meaning holders of data), it is decentralised in nature, it is a distributed ledger to store, validate and hold records of transactions(data) for every one to see. Anyone can participate in the confirmation of transactions as long as the consensus rule is obeyed as to what transactions are to be validated on the network. In recording and confirmation of transactions, mining or computing power is made use. Buy as soon as transactions are completed, no miner has control over completed transactions any fraudulent manipulation can be seen and rejected by other miners participating in securing the network.
What happens incase of any miner or group of miners successfully attacking and hijacking the network......
Before this can happen on any blockchain network, the hijackers would be in control of significant amount of the network hashrate and when this happens, all confirmed transactions during the course of attack can be changed, the attackers can double spend(spending the same coin at different times while retaining the original coin). These group of miners can halt other transactions and take control in such a way that all the rewards from the mining pools will be theirs.
Conclusion....
Although 51% attack can take place even with less than 50% computing power sometime but this is extremely difficult. Also, the further away the first block prior to the time of attack, the more difficult for this kind of attack to be successful.
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