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I'm not sure, but it looks to me like a self mining attack that allows the network to be attacked with only 1/3 of the hash power.
How is this an attack to the network?
I was referring to the fact that a mining pool like foundry is close to 33% or 1/3 of the total hash rate, which allows a selfish mining attack. Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable
https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243.
Thanks for the explanation.
Keep in mind foundry is mostly for institutional investors. Who are not stupid, if it looks like foundry is going to do something that may hurt the price of
BTC they are going to leave and go elsewhere. Or sue them for violating fiduciary trust. Or both. Due to the nature of investing in mining it's a long term ROI having your pool tank the value of
BTC is going to make you react.
-Dave
This confirms that mining is very centralised and controlled by a few institutional investors acting in their own interests and not those of the other participants. Is there a chance to know who are the investors of Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool and ViaBTC?
In theory everyone can join the network, but in practice those who actually participate in the PoW consensus (51%) and produce blocks are less than 0.1% of the miners, i.e. those 50-60 miners reported in the research. To achieve such a high hash rate, it is necessary to have a mining farm and an economy of scale.