GHash.IO currently submitting more than 51% of NMC blocks

[onthefrynge]

Is this of concern to anyone?

[snailbrain]

Is this of concern to anyone?

not much to/can do..
they are close to 50% of btc to

btcguild had 75%+ of nmc for a long long time

it would be pretty dumb for them to attack, in fact, completely stupid, and it will get noticed -- would probably hurt them more than it would hurt namecoin. Namecoin will recover any attack.. a business like that wouldn't ..

eventually everyone mining bitcoin will be mining namecoin imo.. it's nearly at that point now...

EDIT: looks like it was some calculation error of the chart

[virtual_master]

Is this of concern to anyone?

If a mining pool has 50% of a network that doesn't mean that a single person controls it.
A mining pool is very dynamic and if they are doing something bad for the network the people will see it and will go to another pool.
However it is undesirable as it is a kind of centralization and attack factor for the network.
This is not really better by Bitcoin or by any other altcoin. Not to speak about the altcoins where a single group controls all from the beginning.
May be it will found a reasonable long term solution in the future in cooperation with the Bitcoin network to this threat.
--------------
50 % Proof of Stack and 50% Proof of Work mining is avoiding this problem but introduces new vulnerabilities.
Proof of Stack is more vulnerable to back-roll the blockchain once 51% is acquired, so they need to introduce more checkpoints, which is another centralization factor.
Beside of this not all the stack holders are doing Proof of Stack mining (it would be not profitable to keep all the coins in a hot wallet for 1% profit over all the year), may be 10-20% of them are only doing POS mining and therefore 10-20% Stack would be >50% by them.

[biolizard89]

Is this of concern to anyone?

This is a false rumor based on some people having an incomplete understanding of a Python script I wrote. The latest data is at https://www.veclabs.bit/namecoin/statis ... _dist.json ( http://www.veclabs.net/namecoin/statist ... _dist.json on ICANN ) and does not indicate a 51% attack in progress, and I doubt that a 51% attack from GHash.IO actually occurred (unless someone wants to prove me wrong).

Whoever is claiming that a 51% attack occurred should produce evidence or correct the record.

[snailbrain]

i don't think anyone is claiming there was an attack.. just that it was vulnerable to attack

[biolizard89]

i don't think anyone is claiming there was an attack.. just that it was vulnerable to attack

Let me rephrase then: there is no evidence from my data that Namecoin was vulnerable to a 51% attack from GHash.IO. Right now GHash.IO is at about 38% of the NMC hashrate.

[snailbrain]

i don't think anyone is claiming there was an attack.. just that it was vulnerable to attack

Let me rephrase then: there is no evidence from my data that Namecoin was vulnerable to a 51% attack from GHash.IO. Right now GHash.IO is at about 38% of the NMC hashrate.

ok great

wouldn't surprise me if they did get 51%, but it would be worse for them than it would for namecoin if they "did anything".

as i said, btcguild had 75%+ for a long long time.. no one really bothered..

[cassini]

Just knocked up a quick-and-dirty script scanning the coinbase fields of the latest 1000 blocks. Results:
http://pastebin.com/RGpngqnD
Of these 1000 blocks we have 553 blocks with a coinbase field containing just "04efaa0319010152" (shows up as ".......R" in std ASCII).
If "04efaa0319010152" is ghash.io's coinbase string then yes, they found 55.3% of the last 1000 namecoin blocks.
However, it could be a generic string used by several smaller pools. In this case ghash.io obviously have much less than 45%.

Anybody an idea about the meaning of "04efaa0319010152"?

[traister]

Hello,


This whole namecoin being 51% vulnerable is not correct and is based on someone looking at the pie chart on namecoin.org which was not updated with the correct hashing power distribution. Yesterday it was only showing only 3 different mining pools in the pie chart therefore making it seem like Ghash had 54%. Im pretty sure it just meant they had 54% between those 3 mining pools. As you can see it is now updated with the other mining pools and (other) category leaving us nowhere near 51%! Even if Ghash or some big mining pool did have 51% they would be incredibly stupid to even attempt a 51% attack as it most likely wont gain them that much in the end and would most likely kill BTC as well in the process! Eventually when NMC and BTC are merge mined by everyone they could both potentially be in the 51% at the same time. That is when you need to worry!

[biolizard89]

Hello,


This whole namecoin being 51% vulnerable is not correct and is based on someone looking at the pie chart on namecoin.org which was not updated with the correct hashing power distribution. Yesterday it was only showing only 3 different mining pools in the pie chart therefore making it seem like Ghash had 54%. Im pretty sure it just meant they had 54% between those 3 mining pools. As you can see it is now updated with the other mining pools and (other) category leaving us nowhere near 51%! Even if Ghash or some big mining pool did have 51% they would be incredibly stupid to even attempt a 51% attack as it most likely wont gain them that much in the end and would most likely kill BTC as well in the process! Eventually when NMC and BTC are merge mined by everyone they could both potentially be in the 51% at the same time. That is when you need to worry!

namecoin.org is using a script I wrote. The inaccuracy wasn't due to only having 3 pools; it's due to the fact that it was using the ratio of BTC/NMC difficulties, which only update every 2 weeks (and not at the same time). BTC difficulty had just updated; NMC hadn't yet; this caused all pools to appear inflated. I have updated the script to use real-time network hashrates, so it should be pretty close to accurate now.