Monero Proponents Up In Arms As One XMR Mining Pool Approaches 51% Hashrate Control
Members of the Monero mining community have vocalized concerns regarding the rising hashrate of a specific pool called mineXMR.com. Some members opine that coins are at risk and the pool in question could launch a blockchain reorganization attack if it gains more than 50 percent of the total hash power on the Monero network.
Monero Miners Move To Boycott Dominant Pool
According to a Reddit post published on Monday February 14, 2022, a number of Monero proponents are agitating for crypto miners to boycott the mineXMR pool. These Redditors have highlighted that the pool is well on its way to achieving a majority of the network’s hashrate and poses a threat to Monero’s decentralization.
Hashrate is a measure of the total computational power deployed to verify transactions, finalize settlement, and mine new coins. It’s a common metric leveraged by proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain networks like Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum prior to the proof-of-stake (PoS) update.
Data from Monero Pool List shows that the mineXMR pool controls around 43 percent of the hashrate at the time of writing this report. One Redditor with the username ‘pet2pet1982’ also pointed out an unusual surge in the pool’s hash power from 1.34 GH/s to 1.44 GH/s within a 24 hour period.
The user said the sharp increase was caused by new miners and questioned the incentive behind choosing mineXMR over other available pools. Replying to the question, a member of the Monero community commented that mineXMR appears as a top search result on Google. Also, the response added that:
“MineXMR is reaching too high of a hashrate and is approaching 50% hashrate. This would be bad and would give too much power to the pool to make soft forks and change code.”
Furthermore, Monero miners are calling on all crypto miners to help dilute mineXMR’s hash power in an effort to avoid a blockchain reorganization attack. During a reorg attack also known as a 51 percent attack, a group of miners with control of more than half of the network’s hashrate can stop new transactions and halt on-chain settlement.
The attackers can also reverse engineer completed transactions and double-spend the same cryptocurrencies more than once.
Proof of Work Blockchains Vulnerable to 51% Attacks
The situation with mineXMR highlights a loophole present in PoW blockchains as a group of miners could dedicate more hardware to increase their hash power and seize control of the network. Although this might prove difficult for larger blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, such attacks have occurred in the past.
As previously reported by crypto.news, Bitcoin SV (BSC) suffered five 51 percent attacks between June 2020 and August 2020. The damage done during these attacks also resulted in three versions of the chain’s simultaneous mining.
Also, an unknown attacker reorganized some 300 blocks on the Firo blockchain back in January 2021. The incident reduced the network’s block history by some 12 months. In a similar reorg attack launched on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network, over 10,000 blocks were disrupted and miners reportedly lost million of dollars.
