Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: [1000 unconfirmed transaction] Spam attack has practically ended for 2 days!
by
dinofelis
on 20/03/2017, 07:13:31 UTC
this cheapness and fastness always comes with a cost. the only thing people usually see is the price of those altcoins that is volatile but that is only one of the risks and it is not even the biggest one!
one of the biggest threats is always an unsecure network and that happens when there aren't enough full nodes running. we have all heard people bitch and moan about bitcoin blockchain be big and them having hard time running a full node.
now think what happens when the blockchain of these "faster" altcoins reaches 500 GB! how many nodes do you think will remain running a cheap altcoin?
and with their numbers falling the network of that altcoin would crumble and all hell will break lose.

Yes, I think you need to find some excuse why bitcoin is wasting 400 million dollars a year Smiley

Even ETC wasn't attacked seriously when it split off ETH as a small minority chain.  No major altcoin ever suffered a serious block chain break down.  Not more than bitcoin in the past, when it was much smaller than those altcoins are right now.

And no, nodes don't count for shit in "maintaining the security of the network" in a proof of work system (PoS is different...)

Keep telling yourself that only bitcoin is secure, and that you need to waste 400 million dollars a year to maintain essentially 10 miners serving the bitcoin block chain, because it is the nodes on the PC of amateurs like me that "maintain the security".  And then ponder why proof of work would actually be needed, if nodes maintain the security of the network.  And then ponder why altcoins, much bigger than bitcoin a few years ago, would fail when bitcoin didn't.

And then ask yourself honestly if the story makes sense.