What Is a “51% Attack” and How Does PoW Prevent It?
A 51% attack is a hypothetical scenario where a single entity or group gains control of more than 50% of a blockchain network's total hashing power. This control would allow them to prevent new transactions from gaining confirmations and, more critically, to reverse their own transactions, enabling double-spending.
PoW prevents this by making the acquisition and maintenance of such a large amount of computing power prohibitively expensive and economically unviable.
Glossar
51% Attack
Dominance ⎊ The 51% attack, within cryptocurrency contexts, represents a scenario where a single entity or coalition controls more than half of a blockchain network's hashing power or stake.
Mining Power
Capacity ⎊ Mining Power represents the total aggregated computational effort, measured in hashes per second, dedicated by all active participants to secure a specific proof-of-work blockchain at any given moment.
Decentralization
Architecture ⎊ The core tenet of decentralization, particularly within cryptocurrency, options trading, and derivatives, revolves around distributing control and decision-making authority away from a central entity.
PoW
Mechanism ⎊ PoW, or Proof-of-Work, is the original consensus mechanism requiring participants, or miners, to expend significant computational energy to solve a cryptographic puzzle to validate transactions and append new blocks to the chain.