Vertcoin - the people´s coin. The GPU mineable coin. ASIC resistant coin. And the coin, that has been 51% attacked 2 times.
This is maybe one of the biggest cons when it comes to Vertcoin. On many sites over the internet you learn that Vertcoin (VTC) is "dead, unstable and dangerous" coin. All of these statements mostly come from it being 51% attacked twice in the past. In this article I´m going to cover the problematics of 51% attack, why is it unlikely to happen today and how VTC faces these challenges.
*51% attack - simplified, this can occur if one entity owns 51% of the hashpower or more. Then it can prevent the "smaller half" from confirming transaction blocks, which leads to possible double-spend of the coins. Vertcoin is susceptible to this strike because of its properties - being ASIC resistant and GPU-only mineable. This means that if you manage to create an ASIC for the used algorithm, you will have an unfairly high hashrate in comparison to all the other entities mining only with their GPU´s. Let it be 20 ASICs in hands of one entity, and the disaster is born. The other way of accumulating unusually high hashrate in comparison to rest of the network is to hire it. If there is no possibility of using ASIC, you could also build a gigantic GPU rig - which would prove very expensive to use it just for the attack. But there are services like nicehash, where you can hire the computing power for a limited time.
In the last paragraph I have covered both of the 51% attacks from the past. They happened in decembers - the ones of 2018 and 2019. Both of them were not really successful - the attacker probably spent more to perform them than he managed to steal. But both of these events have damaged Vertcoin´s reputation. For example, this led exchanges to rise the number of confirmations needed for VTC transaction - Bittrex sits at 600 and Bitvavo even at 900. That means the transactions often take about 16 hours, which gives the exchanges time to halt VTC transfering by closing the wallets in case of another attack.
A new VTC 51% attack is unlikely to happen again in 2021. The blockchain is more secure nowadays with the influx of new miners who help to secure the network. Vertcoin has also forked every time it was needed - that means changing the algorithm to maintain ASIC-resistance. Also there is no possibility to hire hashpower for Verthash in these days. The pools are ran by trustworthy entities and the community is working together to eliminate the risk to the minimum. If you are interested in Vertcoin, check my other posts. It´s really easy to setup the mining, which is possible even on older hardware. Help us secure the network!
