Ethereum Merge’s architect, Justin Drake, told Cointelegraph that he thinks it would be cheaper to launch a 51% attack against Bitcoin than in Ethereum.
Drake said it would be “much cheaper for 51% Bitcoin attack” and that would cost “in the request of $ 10 billion.”
Drake led the work in the implementation of Ethereum’s participation test (POS) and was a main architect in the merger (the full post transition event). His comments echo a position of May 14 by Grant Hummer, co -founder of the marketing company and products focused on Ethereum Etherealiz.
In the publication, Hummer said Bitcoin “is completely written due to its security budget.”
Hummer said it would cost $ 8 billion to execute a successful attack of 51%, and expects a successful attack to be “virtual safe” when the cost falls to $ 2 billion. There is a 51% attack when a single entity or group controls approximately 50% of the mining or attack power of a blockchain network, gaining energy over the network. Hummer added:
“This will become blindly obvious during the next decade. ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto-attitude that can become the Internet [store of value]. “
Related: Co -metric research shows that BTC and ETH are immune to 51% attacks
Ethereum’s attack would cost much more
Drake explained that “to have 100% chain control, you need 50% + 1 or stake.” He said it would be extremely widespread and exensive, but far from being impossible:
“A rich nation state can achieve it.”
At the time of writing, there were 34,168,987 Ether (ETH) worth almost $ 89.6 billion. Consistently, half or all ETH has a current value of almost $ 44.8 billion.
Even so, a much higher investment would probably be needed. Ether has a current market capitalization of $ 316 billion and a 24 -hour negotiation volume of $ 25 billion (almost 8% of market capitalization).
The eth necessary for an attack is worth almost 14.2% of market capitalization and 180% of the 24 -hour negotiation volume. A company of that size would probably cause a significant appreciation of ETH prices, further increasing the cost of the attack.
Related: Great miners represent a growing existential threat for Bitcoin
Ethereum’s last defense line
Matan Sitbon, the founder and CEO of the Blockchain interoperability developer, Lightblocks, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum has an additional feature to defend himself from such attacks.
“The maximum security of Ethereum lies not only in the rules of cryptography or protocol, but in the powerful mechanisms of social and economic coordination of the community,” he said.
Drake also highlighted another advantage that believes that Ethereum has over Bitcoin. He explained that “if there is a 51%attack, the social layer can identify the accessory and reduce it socially.”
“This is a Post superpower that is not available with Pow,” he added.
Drake’s statement refers to the social layer, which means the human supermayness of the network, which decides which software to execute. Bitcoin’s work test consensus mechanism has a narrower attack surface and a longer reliability history, but lacks this characteristic.
Pavel Yashin, a P2P.org researcher, told Cointelegraph that “if centralization is detected,” the community could solve it with a new fork. The old file would end up being eliminated, and the compromised chain would fall into irrelevance.
Hassan Khan, CEO of the Bitcoin Liquity protocol protocol order, told Cointelegraph that “the debate on the viability of a 51% attack is still open, however, although theoretically possible, in practice.”
He said that for Bitcoin, the necessary amount of computer power and energy “makes a sustained attack highly unlikely,” while for Ethereum, “Pos presents additional economic and governance derrens.”
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