Blockchain’s security is the general aim of the Pirl community. Developers have been searching a way to protect the network from both 51% attacks and ASIC influence. Now, it’s finally alive – the PirlGuard Security Protocol!
51% Attacks and Double Spending
For the purpose of clearly explaining the malicious influence of the double spending, which is frequently achieved by a 51% attack, an example will be presented.
Example
When searching for a block’s solution, miners are using a computational power to resolve a mathematical equation, which is called a hashing power. When they found the missing element to fill the puzzle, it gets broadcasted to the network in order to inform all the miners.
Anyway, if a miner solves the riddle and doesn’t publish his answer, we observe the creation of an offspring of the blockchain. He can continue adding blocks to his corrupted chain and no one will follow it, since miners must work always on the longest chain.
Let’s say the creator of the offspring spends a big amount of coins on the real chain but don’t do it on the offspring one. If the corrupted miner posses hashing power more than the other miners do, then he’ll be able to solve blocks faster and create a longer chain. According the consensus protocol, if the hacker broadcast a longer than the real chain, all the miners should continue working on the newly announced one, where coins weren’t spending. In a word, the malicious user will be able to spend the amount one more time, since the blockchain where he declared it was considered no longer valid.
This is how double spending occurs by the help of a 51% hashing power (a person possessing more than the others all together).
PirlGuard’s Security Mechanism
Developers team aims for creating a modification of the consensus algorithm, which is going to protect the Pirl network from 51% attacks. Here’s how this is going to happen. Let’s go back to the example.
When providing information about the offspring, which was private up to the moment of broadcasting, the hacker’s node will need to peer with the others. Then the PirlGuard protocol is going to recognize the unpeered adding of blocks and directly drop the user by penalizing him to mine a certain amount of blocks in the nowhere (this one depends on the offspring’s number of blocks privately mined).
This improvement is going to decrease the 51% attack chance to 0.03%.
PirlGuard’s Masternode Protection
Masternodes are planned to become a part of the process of preserving the blockchain’s honesty. They will act as a notarizing station, which will also be allowed to participate in the penalizing of malicious miners. A notary contract is going to be implemented on the Pirl network as a security measure.
If somehow a hacker succeeds to attempt an attack, a new orphan system for monitoring is going to detect the issue and alert the developers. The PirlGuard protocol will be as well part of the open source center. In fact, the team is currently working on a their own privately encrypted storage.