How a Stealth 51% Attack on Bitcoin Could Work

Before diving into my idea of a stealth 51% attack, let's talk about how transaction filters operate.

Imagine there are red transactions (spam) and green transactions (valid). Nodes only allow green transactions, filtering out the reds. So your node gets these transactions from wallets and other nodes, right? It then keeps the greens in the mempool.

But what if miners start making empty blocks, just with the coinbase transaction? Those spread way faster. Should they just classify everything else as red and only keep coinbase green? Makes risky for users like Bob, right?

Honestly, not sure why we’d bother running Knots to counter 51% attack threats. Like how many confirmations do we really need?

It’s been proven some mining pools could pull off a 51% attack but didn’t, because the fallout isn’t worth it. If panic hits, Bitcoin price drops fast.

I'm all for BIP110, helps tackle spam directly at the consensus level. It sets limits to make sure core developers can’t mess with it.

But do you really think they wouldn’t benefit from this? With over half the hashrate, they could spam blocks endlessly without fear of orphaning.

Most of the transactions my node sees end up in blocks. Sure, some slip through, but that’s rare.

This is kinda interesting. I’m not a cryptographer, but I’m speaking from my own understanding of Bitcoin. Why call out names when we're talking theories?

Dude, if you don’t use generic names like Alice and Bob, people might not take you seriously. It’s a standard way to discuss concepts in tech.

Just because something’s been done for ages doesn’t make it good. Like, people smoke crack forever, that doesn’t legitimize it!

When miners mess with the P2P network like with LibreRelay, they’re trying to cheat filters to push spam, that’s a big problem.

Isn’t using stuff like LN just another kind of attack? Wouldn't all that traffic be better off on-chain?

What’s being described isn’t a real 51% attack. Two miners with 66% hash power are squeezing out a third. It’s more about censorship resistance.

Yeah, LN is layer two but LibreRelay is just taking advantage of the network to load spam. That’s putting more weight on the chain.

If they manage to block spammy transactions, they could pretty much censor whatever they want later on. That's scary stuff.

Just to clarify, I’m not saying a 51% attack is happening right now, just that there are signs pointing to it.

You realize a big pool secretly owns a bunch of others, right? They could just hold back their blocks and mine faster than everyone else.

If people can’t figure out what's spam, that’s a huge issue. Knots gives no guarantees on future filters.

So, were they the guys routing through NYIIX during the pandemic? Gossip says they beefed up their mining capacity.