How Do Hashrate Rental Markets Impact the Economic Security Model of Proof-of-Work (PoW) Coins?

Hashrate rental markets introduce an external, fungible source of computational power that bypasses the internal security assumption of PoW. The security model relies on the high cost of acquiring and running mining hardware.

By allowing temporary, cheap access to massive hashrate, the rental market de-links the attack cost from the hardware investment cost. This effectively makes the network's security budget lower and more susceptible to transient, profitable attacks.