On Tuesday, privateness coin Monero (XMR) mining pool MineXMR’s hash charge surpassed over 1.4 GH/s, accounting for 44% of the hash charge of the XMR community. MineXMR has about 13,000 miners and fees a 1% pool payment. In accordance with a screenshot from Archive.org final August, the pool solely contributed to 34% of the hash charge of the XMR community.
The fast rise within the community’s hash charge has spooked some XMR fans, with Reddit person u/vscmm writing:
“We have to speak with MineXMR to take some motion proper now! Please ship an e mail for assist@minexmr.com to MineXMR admins to take motion; a 51% pool is just not in the perfect curiosity of the group or the pool.”
If a 51% assault had been to happen, the unhealthy actors concerned may probably overturn community transactions to double-spend contributors’ crypto. Nonetheless, on condition that Monero obfuscates the id of the sender and recipient by way of stealth addresses and ring signatures, hackers’ capabilities, on this case, can be way more restricted. Theoretically, they might solely use such assaults to mine empty blocks or double-spend their very own XMR by promoting it to an alternate after which publishing an alternate ledger.
Reddit customers identified that MineXMR publicly discloses the placement of its company workplaces, that are positioned in the UK. Conducting 51% associated denial of service and fraud assaults would probably carry prison penalties in stated nation. Even when a mining pool had been to build up over 51% of a community’s hash charge, this might solely compromise a blockchain’s operations if the entity had ulterior motives for doing so.