Comment by jkhdigital
1 month ago
I’m not sure if I am mathematically sophisticated enough to follow along but I’ll try. This chain of thought reminds me of the present state of cryptography, which is built on unproven assumptions about the computational hardness of certain problems. Meanwhile Satoshi Nakamoto hacks together some of these cryptographic components into a novel system for decentralized payments with a few hand-wavy arguments about why it will work and it grows into a $1+ trillion asset class.
The innovation on Bitcoin is not about cryptography but game-theory at work. For example, is it convenient for a miner to destroy the system or to continue mining? There are theoretical attacks at around 20%, not 51%. A state actor could also attack the system if they want to invest enough resources.
Genuinely curious since I’d only heard of the “51% attack” — what happens around 20%?
Please check "Selfish Mining: A 25% Attack Against the Bitcoin Network" [1] and scientific studies such as [2].
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pv8ty/selfish_min...
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.06183
yes the cool thing about tech is that you don't have to know why it will work or even how, just so long as it does.