So I was just reading an article about the Nakamoto coefficient, and it mentioned that #Bitcoin's Nakamoto coefficient is two, since two mining pools are able to collude and gain 51% of the hash rate. Measuring #Monero in that same way shows it also has a Nakamoto coefficient of 2, but it seems like a 51% attack in Monero would be less damaging than a 51% attack in Bitcoin since the mining pools would have to either stop all transactions or continue to allow all transactions through since they can't filter out specific transactions.
Discussion
"Measuring #Monero in that same way shows it also has a Nakamoto coefficient of 2"
Are you now confusing the number of users ?
The Nakamoto coefficient doesn't measure users. It measures the amount of entities required to take consensus of the network. In Bitcoin and Monero, that would be the mining pools.
Less dmanaging for the colluders you mean? Gotta be more clear with this.
Less damaging for the users. With Bitcoin, colluders can filter out specific transactions and say, no, we're not going to allow those transactions. In Monero, they cannot do that. They can put through their own transactions, they can stop the rest of the network, or they can let the network continue as normal, but they cannot filter specific transactions.
Ok what about the opportunity cost for both?
really depends on what they're going for if they just want to completely shut down the networks then they would mine empty blocks and only collect the reward for mining the blocks which would be 0.6 Monero or 3.125 Bitcoin. They can't leave the Monero network running normally to collect fees since they can't filter transactions. But they could leave the Bitcoin network running and filter out specific transactions that they don't like and collect the fees for the transactions they allow plus the mining reward.
Don't you think such mining pools would go bankrupt? After all it's a pool, if reputation is damaged and folks join other more honest pools, then they are left with nothing.
Opportunity cost for the attackers is greater with bitcoin, as this is not pools that are attackers but certain clique of individuals and they do not make up all the pool.
Very nuanced this is; one can't extrapolate one way with such minimal analysis of attack verctors.
That's true. A mining pool is nothing but a collection of individuals. And if it was known that the pool was causing problems, the individuals would leave.
The bitcoin asics are wothless after a successful 51% attack though.
The hardware used for a 51% attack on monero can be re-used.