How Can a Blockchain Project Increase Its ‘Cost to Attack’ without Changing Its Consensus Mechanism?

A project can increase its 'cost to attack' by increasing its network's hash rate, which typically requires increasing the coin's market price and block rewards to incentivize more honest miners. They can also switch to a proprietary or niche mining algorithm that requires specialized, non-rentable hardware.

Additionally, reducing the transaction confirmation time or increasing the required number of confirmations can raise the economic barrier for a double-spend attack.