The threat of a 51% attackDue to the difficulty of a given miner discovering a block, many bitcoin miners join pools, which consolidate mining power and increase miners’ chances of discovering a block and receiving proportional shares of a given reward.As pools constitute a majority of the network’s hashing power, there has been growing concern in the community regarding the outsized influence of Ghash.io.Though some notable bitcoin community members suggest the threat is not as grave as widely believed, a mining pool with more than 51% of the network’s hashing power could theoretically double-spend transactions, prevent confirmations and keep competing miners from discovering new blocks.Such a threat is not unique to bitcoin, as earlier this year litecoin mining pool Coinotron grew toward 51% of the network’s hashing total before individual miners in the pool withdrew from the cooperative.Community reactionThe varied responses to Ghash.io’s growing influence in the mining network were perhaps most visible on reddit, where bitcoin miners and enthusiasts partook in an impassioned discussion throughout the day.Some reddit users took to the social network to suggest potential peer-to-peer solutions to the growing influence of centralized mining pools, while speculating on how other mining pools were able to avoid exerting such an influence on the network successfully in the past.Still, other miners defended Ghash.io and mining pools, arguing that they are a necessary part of the ecosystem that enables independent miners to profit from bitcoin.Image via BitFury51% attackBitfuryGhash.iominingOriginal author: Pete Rizzo