Hey everyone,

I've been looking into 51 percent attacks recently and was wondering about the limitations. In a 51 percent attack an attacker tries to generate an alternate chain faster than the honest chain. To convince the network that his chain is the correct, he must ultimately have the longest chain.

The blocktime for each chain is 10 min per block. If blocks are created too fast, the difficulty is adjusted.

Given these limitations how is it possible to build an alternate chain that grows much faster than the honest chain? If my understanding is correct, nodes also check whether the difficulty target has been adjusted correctly. So if the block time is too short in the long run, the newly mined blocks might not been recognized by the network.

Is that correct or do I miss something? Thanks!