On Tuesday, privateness coin Monero (XMR) mining pool MineXMR’s hash fee surpassed over 1.4 GH/s, accounting for 44% of the hash fee of the XMR community. MineXMR has about 13,000 miners and prices a 1% pool price. In line with a screenshot from Archive.org final August, the pool solely contributed to 34% of the hash fee of the XMR community.
The fast rise within the community’s hash fee has spooked some XMR lovers, with Reddit consumer u/vscmm writing:
“We have to discuss with MineXMR to take some motion proper now! Please ship an electronic mail for help@minexmr.com to MineXMR admins to take motion; a 51% pool just isn’t in the perfect curiosity of the neighborhood or the pool.”
If a 51% assault have been to happen, the unhealthy actors concerned might probably overturn community transactions to double-spend contributors’ crypto. Nevertheless, provided that Monero obfuscates the identification of the sender and recipient by stealth addresses and ring signatures, hackers’ capabilities, on this case, can be much more restricted. Theoretically, they might solely use such assaults to mine empty blocks or double-spend their very own XMR by promoting it to an trade after which publishing an alternate ledger.
Reddit customers identified that MineXMR publicly discloses the placement of its company workplaces, that are situated in the UK. Conducting 51% associated denial of service and fraud assaults would doubtless carry felony penalties in mentioned nation. Even when a mining pool have been to build up over 51% of a community’s hash fee, this is able to solely compromise a blockchain’s operations if the entity had ulterior motives for doing so.
Source: Coin Telegraph