Strength in Numbers: a Brief History of 51% Attacks

Ever since the first decentralized blockchain-based cryptocurrency (Bitcoin), there have been attempts at a network takeover, termed a “51% attack.” These occur when an individual or group of miners controls more than 50% of the networks hashing power, enabling them to create a fork of the blockchain that is constructed faster than the original. By doing this, the attacker is able to perform a double spend attack, whereby they send coins in the original blockchain until they are conf