Hmm, was sort of hoping some other folks would take a look. That is why I started the thread, wanted to see if I was missing or misinterpreting something. If you are just going off of my summary, regurgitation, then something could be missed. Please review the source material if you can.


Well for bitcoin, this would might mean at least a 20 minute delay for 1 confirmation. "20 minute" because if you are splitting the hash rate pretty evenly then sending your merchandise transactions to one side, then on average it would take 20 minutes for 1/2 the hash rate to mine one block. So that is a 20 minute "delay". I would call it a 20 minute disruption. But let's not get caught on semantics unless I'm misunderstanding something.



Someone familiar with mining pools should be able to answer this. If indeed remote miners (outside of the pool's network) are contributing to a pool, who announces the found block to the bitcoin network? It is the mining pool isn't it? I don't think the individual miners even know what transactions are included, they are using the block header only. So centralized mining pool is what announces the found block. Correct?

Yes the attack still may be difficult. We must take 4 mining pools, allow them to connect to each other's nodes (or get blocks over relay network), but prevent them from reaching other nodes (or getting relay network blocks) that are connected to the other side. Because mining pools are centralized in one geographic area (China) this would seem to make the task somewhat more feasible. Still a challenge no doubt.