Even thinking about more about it, it could be a pike after the nicehash hack. I didn’t check the dates, but i could imagine that it is about the same time and big and small players had to look immediatly for other options where to send their hashpower causing peeks on several of the most profitabnle coins listed on whattomine (we know that 95% of the miners go after that) and Zcash is listed there. Would be another plausible explaination in my opinion.
As Eulersheep didn’t provide an exact time frame i’am unable to check if this indeed would be a valid option.
You may want to read about the difficulty adjustment algorithm. This has been brought up numerous times in this thread and is simply untrue. From the protocol spec:
Zcash uses a difficulty adjustment algorithm based on DigiShield v3/v4 [DigiByte-PoW], with simplifications and altered parameters, to adjust difficulty to target the desired 2.5-minute block time. Unlike Bitcoin, the difficulty adjustment occurs after every block.
A lot of places have such hash power. Nicehash alone has for rent about 4x the amount of hash power someone needs for a 51% attack on Zencash.
Theoretically someone could rent that hashpower and attack 4 projects of the same size as Zencash at the same time on equihash algo only with Nicehash hashpower.
I know what some are suggesting, but who the hell is building a farm if you can do that just with 25k bucks???
While for hackers and criminals it’s perfect. Invest 25k, get 550k, with about 0% chance to get caught and suffer any penalty.
Well, it looks like conspiracy theory, but all recent 51% attacks lead us to conclusion, that than more hashrate algorithm has - more it secure. And i know only one company that profits from this situation. I think we could all agree, that Z9’s main target is ZEC. So maybe, maybe, some random guys with Bitmain help try scare us by attacking our younger equihash brothers and convience to enhance net hashrate with ASIC’s. “straightened my tin foil hat”
There is no rocket science behind that that the more hashrate a network has and the less is available for rent the safer the network is from 51% attacks.
BUT i fail to see how this would profit Bitmain? Every coin can immediatly emergency fork, go POS, whatever. Serously, i can’t see any logical reason behind that that is more logical than criminals making easy money. I would admit it if there was, but this just doesn’t fit up, neither makes any sense.
Not even talking about what would happen if such information would be confirmed. It would be the out and end for Bitmain forever and everywhere. A multibillion dollar manufactor involved in some low 51% attacks.
Most times the most simple and most logic explaination is the right one. Criminals making daily profit from 51% attacks or timestamp spoofing, which is 100x more logical than such conspiracy theorie.
But after you seem to be a fan of conspiracy theories, here 2 others.
Big GPU maining facilities that have interest in the equihash projects launch such attacks to blame bitmain for it, pressing on a fork so their mining investement will be good some more years.
The Project Dev(s) their own launch such attack to make some quick extra bucks. With all their knowledge it’s an ease to let it look like an attack while it’s more or less an inside job, wouldn’t be the first time by the way!!! Just as a side note, i think this exactly this happens at Verge the last weeks, that they counterfei millions of XVG … but hard to proof, just my opinion.
What allways makes me stunning that so many people even don’t think about other options, not saying that mine are true, but at least i consider other options, while many of you even avoid other options at all costs, just to have the "always-guilty evil bitmain factor as an argument.
Tin foil hat…maybe…maybe not. I just find it interesting we always talked about 51% attacks as something that “could” happen before the whole ASIC debate…and now suddenly they are happening (on more than one coin). It’s true someone with some decent money could pull this off with NiceHash rented power on the smaller coins…but why would you do that? That’s an awful lot of risk to take for not that much of a payout, 500K really isn’t that big of a payoff for legal risks. Am I wrong to wonder if we aren’t being “scared” into choosing a certain path to avoid this down the road? Question is can the Coin Devs, Pool operators, etc trace this back to someone, even Nice Hash would have a vested interest and rooting out a bad actor like this. It’s not like they haven’t been on the receiving end of bad behavior like this.
Sorry, but that’s total garbage here now.
1.) Only nicehash has at very least 4x the hashrate for a 51% on Zencash available, mostly more. Go and check!
2.) You can rent it for whatever you want as it’s sent to the hackers miningpool and out of reach for Nicehash what after that happens… Just common sense and logic.
3.) I’am not a Bitmain lover, i’am neutral and have my own mind. But such posts provoke me to play the advocate for them, even more on such total wrong with intension missleading posts like the one i quoted.
3.) It’s maybe your 100th post without a true fact, argument and only with false, missleading, wrong statement, seriously. Nothing bad to stand up for your point, but at least check here and there a bit if what you say is true or pure fantasy. I said so far 10 times that nicehash has the hashrate, you can go and check it along with everybody else that doesn’t believe. You don’t care, not even checking, only Bitmain has the hashrate, total joke such argumentation.
P.S.1:
Just checked Nicehash. For immediate purchase 60 MH/s on equihash are possible right now at the moment without waiting. 2x times the hashrate needed for a Zencash 51% attack. Not even talking about all the other cloud and mining rental services…
P.S.2: Just checked out of curiousity miningrigrentals too. They as well have some 40 MH/s available for immediate purchase to whomever desires…
Did they actually get that money? They contacted the exchanges and increased the confirmations to 100. All of these low hashpower coins may permanently be raised because of these attacks. That hopefully will put an end to them.
I don’t disagree that it’s completely possible for that to occur. But what would the cost to maintain that kind of attack using NiceHash be? Do you even have anything to prove NiceHash is involved? Better yet though…Why would this happen now, what’s the motivation behind it? Keep in mind we were simply talking about the potential for 51% attacks not too long ago…and now it’s happened, twice, three times if you consider the XMR incident to be an attempt. There is an entire thread on the forums worried about Flypool being a 51% attack threat, but this didn’t come from FlyPool did it? I think we are chasing a convenient rabbit of worrying about a single pool in one hand, and not paying enough attention in trying to determine “who” has been actually doing these attacks right now. All three coins have only one thing in common from my understanding. They all said no to ASIC. I’m not going to point the finger at Bitmain though…because I can’t prove a thing even if I did. But how many times does this have to happen to coins that said “no” before it finally drifts from speculation and coincidence and starts to take on the air of real possibility?
Is anyone even trying to get to the bottom of who is perpetrating these attacks? Is it the same person/group? Different Groups? Depending on where it originated…could this be considered a cyber crime in that country?
No matter the motivation every Coin Dev needs to pause and take notice of this. Resources will need to be dedicated to determine the quickest and most effective way to detect and mitigate these issues going forward. Whoever is doing this, they have opened a Pandora’s box and it’s going to be a continual problem now I fear.
thanks for pointing it out, and yes we are aware of that, too, there are several attack vectors for potential bad actors in this field and i think the point here is to minimize those risks as we do not know when these network/hashrate vulnerabilities will be exploited
as someone here recently said:
“the BTG 51% attack is a warning shot. It was an attack on the top Equihash coin who have publicly stated they would change their hashing algorithm. Let the implications of that not be lost on anyone.”
with these in mind, we are reaching out to previous maintainers of Zclassic (now the BTCP team) and future forkers (BTCA => ANON team) to coordinate on a cross-team effort to address these risks of attack, centralization and hashrate capitalist monopoly
Nicehash has ~630 TH/s on X11, which is at least 26 times more than minimal for 51% attack on any whattomine-listed X11 coin except Dash(24TH/s right now has MonetaryUnit).
Nicehash also has ~450 MH/S on Cryptonight, which is even enough to attack one of the biggest coins there(Bytecoin and MoneroOriginal have ~400 MH/s each right now)
So looks like things are even worse for Bitmain-friendly ASIC-friendly coins.
if this attack is doing nicehash this is wery easy to track because rate for this algo is be wery high and millions of users nicehash reported this in any public treads (youtube, forums and other). if you really miner how are you trying to show you cnow this so easy and then nice hash is will have wery big problems with his service. And team of nicehash is public person and they themselves will be say about it. “from our servise is been hacked any project”. I think attack may do only dark secret pool not so public company as nicehash. This may be do only asics which be made before announce of final product and they were made. They will be join in in network by degrees that no one would notice how you try to say us. Bitmain is not stupid. They dont show they hash in one time. They will be add this hashes with time to make they users buy they more strong asics. And in this time they use this hashes to attacks that they would not stand idle testing them in passing and spreading over different coins. Nicehash is not so big problem because nice hash in not manufacturer of they asics and they is complete of users which have 1 to 100 to 1000 cards but many of users is small users with 1-2-3 cards.
