Charlie Lee: Litecoin is secure against 51% attacks
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, seeing the rumors about the relative cheapness of a 51% attack on his altcoin ($61,000 for an hour attack), has stated that this would not happen:
In lite of recent 51% attacks and https://t.co/yfy2GcBfQE info, rest assured that the Litecoin is extremely secure and mining is very healthy.
— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) 30 мая 2018 г.
- Pools are well distributed (largest 22%)
- Hashrate up 50x (past 1 year)
- High capital costs to attack ($322-761MM + ~$38-50k/hr) pic.twitter.com/hD8IrYM8dD
Malicious attacks which allow to hijack 51% of the cryptocurrency network have recently become popular, as hackers now can rent the computational power from services similar to NiceHash. This recently happened to several digital currencies and it has seriously drawn attention of the market participants to the issue.
For example, the hack of Bitcoin Gold has made it possible for a hacker to issue new coins on an unfair basis. There are no written laws in the crypto sphere, but there is a public consensus on basic principles on the work of the cryptocurrency. This has also been violated in the case of Verge, and the situation was even worse, as two mining algorithms of the same cryptocurrency were in jeopardy.
As the hashing power is becoming more and more available, the cost of these malicious operations will only fade down, which brings the community to a serious question: are Proof-of-Work (mining-based) cryptocurrencies able to withstand this over time?
Image: VideoBlocks