
Ask HN: Interesting solutions to the 51% attack problem in Bitcoin - whyyess
What have been the more interesting solutions proposed to this problem? Familiar with the more mainstream ones but they seem to replace one set of problems with another.<p>Would love to hear solutions from security focused groups. Links to mailing lists&#x2F;boards definitely appreciated
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lucozade
Do you mean Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies generally?

For the Bitcoin protocol itself, then I don't believe there are any trustless
solutions. The protocol deliberately promotes pooling with no disincentive to
growth.

As such, you have two options. One is fundamentally change the protocol to not
incentivise large pools. This may be possible but it's not really Bitcoin at
that point (unless you consider it just a brand in which case all bets are
off).

The other option, and is essentially the current one, is to rely on the fact
that the big mining pools are incentivised to not, publicly, screw up the
block chain. Obviously, there's nothing trustless about this but, as long as
the motives of the miners is overwhelmingly financial, this will probably work
fine.

