RepuCoin Blockchain Uses Reputation to Avoid 51% Attack

By Prashant Jha

A new blockchain system has been proposed which would be efficient enough to take control of things even when 51% of its network computational power is in control of the attacker.

The new blockchain system introduced by RepuCoin would use the concept of reputation on its network to fend off a 51% attack. The makers claim that the 51% attack won’t be feasible for the hackers as it would cost them dearly. The makers claim that the network would be a thousand time more expensive for the attack when compared to Bitcoin.

RepucCoin was developed at the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust, and the network promises to be applicable for a number of different sectors including 5G, Fintech, energy, healthcare, and food supply chains.

What is 51% Attack and How It Impacts Blockchain Systems

Cryptocurrencies works on the principles of the Distributed ledger, where the database is distributed and no single authority has control over the supply. All the transaction on the network are verified by the peers and added on the ledger which is available for everyone to see and verify.

However, in order to maintain security, each transaction on the network is encrypted which requires computational power to solve. The miners use specialized rigs to verify these transactions. However, if an attacker can get hold of the 51% of the computational power, they can reverse a transaction on the ledger. Which means they can show a certain transaction being verified a number of times and use the same fund twice, also known as double spending.

In order to resolve the issue, the RepuCoin make use of the reputation of the miner to allow them to mine a particular block. The reputation does not necessarily mean the character or social repo, it’s basically a mathematical calculation which selects the miners depending over their mining history and how efficient they have been in the mining process.

Dr. Jiangshan Yu, the lead researcher at  University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust says,

“We have already seen mining pools such as Ghash.io surpass the 50% threshold on Bitcoin. Just as worryingly, it’s now possible for hackers to rent this kind of computational power in a matter of seconds, allowing them to conduct flash attacks. RepuCoin is the only type of blockchain currently on the market that can withstand such attacks.”

Attacking RepuCoin with 68% of the system’s total mining capability would take at least six months for the attackers when the system has been running for over a year and would be at least 5760 times more expensive as conducting the same attack on Bitcoin network