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Introducing ChainLocks – and they could be just what is needed to defeat 51% of the attacks …
When a group of cryptocurrency miners is able to get control of over 50% of a network sway, the concern is that it gives him too much energy. Known as a potential attack of 51%, in theory – and sadly, in practice in some cases – gives those holding control of 51% the opportunity to exert excessive control. Which can reverse transactions and potentially make money with the worst-case scenarios. Not for nothing is a 51% attack known as the crypto equivalent of a bank robbery.
But what protective measures can be implemented? Well, Alexander Block is a developer with Dash, and he talked about a possible new measure titled ChainLocks.
A ChainLock, which can only be used with a "Sybil-protected network of semi-reliable nodes", is implemented thanks to the introduction of Long Life Masternode Quorum (LLMQs). It is a catchy name, and it is a technology that has been proposed in DIP 8, which you can read in full here.
As Block explained in his blog post on ChainLocks, "for each block, an LLMQ of a few hundred masternodes is selected and each participating member signs the first block that sees the current chain extend to the current height. sufficient members (eg> = 60%) see the same block as the first block, will be able to create a P2P message (CLSIG) and propagate it to all the nodes of the network ".
The sum effect of this is to greatly reduce the chances of a 51% attack. It remains to be seen if this will prevent them from happening completely …
