Is a 51% attack on Monero imminent?

Lavina Daryanani
Source: World Stock Market

Monero has been the buzzword on social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit over the past day. People from the community are concerned about a potential 51% attack that Monero might undergo.

Getting the facts right

As per official data, mining pool ‘MineXMR’ controls approximately 44% of the network’s hash rate. A particular pool asserting the dominance of such a magnitude does raise concerns about the network’s security.

The gap from 44% to 51% isn’t that wide. If MineXMR’s hashrate indeed crosses the halfway mark, it would theoretically be able to execute a 51% attack.

Source: pools.xmr.wiki

A 51% attack, as such, materializes when a group of miners leverage over half the hashing rate or computing power of a particular blockchain network. When the attack is executed, they essentially add a new block of transactions to seize control. This, in turn, lets them double-spend funds used in transactions and make payments untrustworthy.

The irony

Monero, as such, is a ‘privacy’ coin whose network uses a public distributed ledger with ‘privacy-enhancing technologies’ that obfuscate transactions to keep them anonymous. To be more clear-cut, Monero is designed specifically to make it impossible for anyone to trace transactions by breaking the chain that connects one transaction to another.

The fix that Monero is in currently is indeed a cause of concern, given the fact that its users mainly use network banking for its safety and security.

People voice out their concerns

Right from Twitter to Reddit, people from the space have started highlighting the severity of the situation. They’ve been citing their fears about how the continued deployment of mining resources on the MineXMR mining pool could pave the way for an attack. They have already started calling on miners to deploy their hash power on other pools to reduce MineXMR’s hash rate control.

The admin of MineXMR was quick to revert. He took Reddit to state that the fee would be increased to curb the situation. He stated,

“We understand that people are concerned with the large hashrate that minexmr currently has. We have announced an increase to the pool fees and continue to monitor the situation.”

When compared to yesterday’s 48%, the levels have already dipped back to 44% now. If the downtrend continues for a few more hours and the numbers are brought under control, then the attack could be avoided.

Despite the prevailing skepticism, XMR’s price has inclined by more than 5% on the daily window. The 45th ranked crypto was trading at $180 at the time of press.