<p>An attack like this is possible, it is just a way to profit off a 51% attack. However you must remember several things:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>if a miner controls less than 51% of the hashpower, then chances are they will not be able to catch back up to the network after mining the malicious tx, so the honest network will prevail as the longest chain</p></li>
<li><p>if a miner tries the attack but fails to succeed, they will have wasted a lot of resources in doing so (opportunity cost). Compare this to a more guaranteed profit of not being malicious</p></li>
<li><p>if an attack like this succeeded and users noticed, it would hurt the security of the network, and thus coin prices should be expected to fall. So the miner has undermined their own investment. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>If you hunt around online, I have seen a simple formula for determining the value of transaction vs the number of block confirmations to wait for before considering the tx ‘final’. Your line of reasoning is correct: for larger transfers of value, the wait period should be longer, so that the potential reward of malicious behaviour is outweighed by the reward of honest mining. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-12T05:54:43.403Z
Why do you say a miner as I described is not "honest"? The miner just mines for max profit. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/26936/49906 Here is a mining strategy which only mine the tx with the highest fee among all conflict txs. It is not dishonest and every pool can do this.
zzh1996
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-12T06:34:31.730Z
"Honest" and "dishonest" are just used here to label the miners' general behaviour (ie the miner engaged in the attack, vs not). Though I would think that a miner attempting to 51% attack the network in order to claim a doublespend could be described as "dishonest" at any rate.
chytrik
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-11T23:54:58.087Z
2018-03-11T23:54:58.087Z
chytrik
<p>Imagine the following scenario:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>I send you 1000 BTC.</p></li>
<li><p>After 6 confirmations, you give me what I bought.</p></li>
<li><p>I create another transaction with 900 BTC to my own wallet and 100 BTC as transaction fee, using the same input as the previous transaction. (double spend)</p></li>
<li><p>The mining pools find that 100 BTC is higher than 6 block rewards which is 12.5 * 6 = 75 BTC, so they start to mine on the last block which doesn't contain my first transaction.</p></li>
<li><p>Those 6 confirmations are orphaned and the pools earned more money.</p></li>
<li><p>My double spending succeeded.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>I know that this mining strategy is not implemented in most pools today, but nothing is preventing pools from doing this in the future.</p>

<p>100 BTC is a large amount of money. But after many years the block reward will be very low, so this attack may not require so much money to perform in the future.</p>

<p>I googled and didn't find any related questions.</p>

<p>I want to know whether this kind of attack is possible in practice and what we can do to prevent this.</p>

<security><doublespend><attack><majority-attack><chain-reorganization>
Is "fee higher than block reward" attack possible?
zzh1996
# Is "fee higher than block reward" attack possible?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-03-11)

Imagine the following scenario:

* I send you 1000 BTC.
* After 6 confirmations, you give me what I bought.
* I create another transaction with 900 BTC to my own wallet and 100 BTC as transaction fee, using the same input as the previous transaction. (double spend)
* The mining pools find that 100 BTC is higher than 6 block rewards which is 12.5 \* 6 = 75 BTC, so they start to mine on the last block which doesn't contain my first transaction.
* Those 6 confirmations are orphaned and the pools earned more money.
* My double spending succeeded.

I know that this mining strategy is not implemented in most pools today, but nothing is preventing pools from doing this in the future.

100 BTC is a large amount of money. But after many years the block reward will be very low, so this attack may not require so much money to perform in the future.

I googled and didn't find any related questions.

I want to know whether this kind of attack is possible in practice and what we can do to prevent this.

**Tags:** security, doublespend, attack, majority-attack, chain-reorganization


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-03-11. Score: 5

An attack like this is possible, it is just a way to profit off a 51% attack. However you must remember several things:

* if a miner controls less than 51% of the hashpower, then chances are they will not be able to catch back up to the network after mining the malicious tx, so the honest network will prevail as the longest chain
* if a miner tries the attack but fails to succeed, they will have wasted a lot of resources in doing so (opportunity cost). Compare this to a more guaranteed profit of not being malicious
* if an attack like this succeeded and users noticed, it would hurt the security of the network, and thus coin prices should be expected to fall. So the miner has undermined their own investment.

If you hunt around online, I have seen a simple formula for determining the value of transaction vs the number of block confirmations to wait for before considering the tx ‘final’. Your line of reasoning is correct: for larger transfers of value, the wait period should be longer, so that the potential reward of malicious behaviour is outweighed by the reward of honest mining.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Why do you say a miner as I described is not "honest"? The miner just mines for max profit. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/26936/49906 Here is a mining strategy which only mine the tx with the highest fee among all conflict txs. It is not dishonest and every pool can do this.  
> **username_1**: "Honest" and "dishonest" are just used here to label the miners' general behaviour (ie the miner engaged in the attack, vs not). Though I would think that a miner attempting to 51% attack the network in order to claim a doublespend could be described as "dishonest" at any rate.  

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