How Does a 51% Attack Differ from Selfish Mining in Terms of Goals and Impact?
A 51% attack requires a majority of the hashrate to execute malicious actions like double-spending or preventing transactions, aiming for systemic disruption or theft. Selfish mining, however, requires only slightly over 25% of the hashrate and is a profit-maximization strategy for the attacker by gaining an outsized share of block rewards.
The 51% attack targets network integrity; selfish mining targets reward distribution efficiency. Both exploit the PoW consensus mechanism.
Glossar
Selfish
Exploitation ⎊ In cryptocurrency derivatives and options trading, "selfish" denotes a strategic, albeit controversial, behavior primarily observed in Bitcoin mining.
Systemic Disruption
Disruption ⎊ Systemic disruption, within cryptocurrency, options trading, and financial derivatives, signifies a cascade of correlated failures across interconnected markets, extending beyond isolated incidents.
Selfish Mining
Exploitation ⎊ The concept of selfish mining, initially observed within proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin, describes a strategy where a miner withholds solved blocks from the network, broadcasting them later to maximize their reward and gain an unfair advantage.