What is 51% attack

In cryptocurrencies, a 51 percent assault happens when one person or organization controls 51 percent or more of the network's mining or validation power. This organization takes use of its authority to make bogus transactions or deny real ones. A successful 51 percent assault allows miners or validators to make financial benefit by taking control of a cryptocurrency blockchain ledger. Attacks on major crypto networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum with a 51 percent success rate are exceedingly implausible, but not impossible. Continue reading to discover more about 51 percent assaults and how they operate, as well as what they signify for you as an investor.

Here are examples of 51% attacks:

-        Bitcoin Gold, a cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin, was attacked in 2018, resulting in the loss of $18 million from cryptocurrency exchanges.

-        Ethereum Classic, 2019: A 51 percent attack on this cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum blockchain resulted in the theft of around $1.1 million.

A successful 51 percent assault may significantly undermine a cryptocurrency's image and reliability, in addition to monetary theft that can be measured. A cryptocurrency's value can be wiped out by one or more 51 percent assaults.

Despite it might hear hard to do the attack, the steps are as they follow and are actually not that difficult.

Accumulation of mining or validation power

Cryptocurrencies that operate their blockchains using the proof-of-work consensus mechanism can be controlled by accumulating 51 percent of the cryptocurrency's mining or computing power, whereas cryptocurrencies that use the proof-of-stake protocol can be controlled by accumulating 51 percent of the cryptocurrency itself. To accomplish a 51 percent assault, you must collect 51 percent of the applicable resource. Regardless of the sort of consensus process, accumulating power, whether in the form of computing power or validation authority, is challenging. Controlling 51% of the mining hardware and paying for 51% of the energy used by a big crypto network is both prohibitively expensive and logistically unfeasible, therefore controlling 51% of a coin is thus prohibitively expensive. Control of a crypto network remains decentralized due to these inherent restrictions.

Attacker gets control

If an individual or organization gets more than 51 percent control of a network through any manner, it can use its mining or validation capacity to reject genuine transactions while allowing illegitimate transactions to pass through. The miner or validator may also be able to rearrange blocks in the blockchain of the coin.

Crypto network is affected

The miner or validator can divert transactions, double-spend cash, and eventually steal currency from the crypto network if they control 51 percent of the network's resources. The heist isn't complete until the miner or validator changes the unlawfully obtained crypto profits into a different currency.