51% Attack on Ethereum Poses Greater Challenge Than on Bitcoin Asserts Justin Drake
Executing a 51% Attack on Ethereum Poses Greater Challenge Than on Bitcoin, Asserts Justin Drake
According to Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, initiating a 51% attack against the Bitcoin network would be a “much cheaper” endeavor compared to attempting a similar breach on Ethereum.
Drake provided an estimated cost of approximately $10 billion for such an attack on Bitcoin.
Comparative Costs and Expert Opinions on Network Security
Drake, who played a leading role in developing Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) implementation and served as a principal architect for the Merge (Ethereum’s complete transition to PoS), reiterated this view to Cointelegraph.
His assessment aligns with statements made in a May 14 X post by Grant Hummer, co-founder of Etherealize, a company specializing in Ethereum-focused marketing and products.
Hummer contended in his post that Bitcoin “is completely screwed because of its security budget,” estimating an $8 billion cost for a successful 51% attack and asserting that such an attack becomes “virtually certain” if the cost were to decrease to $2 billion.
A 51% attack occurs when a single entity or a coordinated group gains control over more than half of a blockchain network’s mining power (in proof-of-work systems) or staking power (in proof-of-stake systems), thereby acquiring significant influence over the network.
Hummer further remarked, “This will become blindingly obvious over the next decade.
ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto-asset that can become the internet’s [store of value].”
The Substantial Financial Barrier to Compromising Ethereum
Drake explained that achieving “100% control of the chain” requires acquiring “50% + 1 of stake.”
He acknowledged that while this would be an exceedingly difficult and expensive undertaking, it is not entirely unfeasible, suggesting, “A rich nation state can probably pull it off.”
At the time of reporting, the total amount of staked Ether (ETH) stood at 34,168,987, with a valuation nearing $89.6 billion.
Consequently, securing just over half of all staked ETH would necessitate an investment of almost $44.8 billion.
The actual financial outlay would likely need to be significantly greater. Ether currently possesses a market capitalization of $316 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $25 billion (which constitutes just over 8% of its market cap).
The quantity of ETH required for such an attack amounts to nearly 14.2% of the total market cap and a remarkable 180% of the daily trading volume.
An attempt to procure such a vast amount of ETH would almost certainly lead to a substantial appreciation in its price, thereby further inflating the overall cost of the attack.
Ethereum’s Unique Defensive Layer: The Power of Social Coordination
Matan Sitbon, the founder and CEO of Lightblocks, a developer focused on blockchain interoperability, informed Cointelegraph that Ethereum possesses an additional mechanism to defend against such network compromises.
“Ethereum’s ultimate security lies not solely in cryptography or protocol rules, but in the community’s powerful social and economic coordination mechanisms,” Sitbon stated.
Drake also highlighted another advantage he believes Ethereum maintains over Bitcoin.
He explained that “if there is a 51% attack, the social layer can identify the attacker and socially slash it.”
He characterized this as “a superpower of PoS that is not available with PoW.”
Drake’s statement refers to the “social layer,” meaning the human supermajority of network participants who collectively determine which software version to operate.
While Bitcoin’s simpler proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism presents a smaller theoretical attack surface and has a longer track record of reliability, it lacks this social coordination feature.
Pavel Yashin, a researcher at P2P.org, conveyed to Cointelegraph that “if the centralization is detected,” the community could address the issue by initiating a new fork of the blockchain.
In such an event, the original, compromised token would likely be delisted from exchanges, and the affected chain would consequently lose its relevance and value.
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