Nice collection, OP. Though the page is hypothetical it does show some viability of the cost of 51% attack, something which many people deny as uneconomical without proof.
But I am sure there will be people who will deny saying miners can refuse mined blocks and create a branch. And others who will deny this by talking up game theory mechanic of 51% attack - if someone does get 51% power then the rational thing to do is to not harm the coin. This obviously doesn't hold true for an irrational person.
And given the concerns raised for PoW for small coins, I can only say this - "Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It." Here's one of my favorite stories from Nathaniel Popper's Digital Gold about a coin which was very small back in the day called - Bitcoin:
Laszlo’s CPU had been winning, at most, one block of 50 Bitcoins each day, of the approximately 140 blocks that were released daily. Once Laszlo got his GPU card hooked in he began winning one or two blocks an hour, and occasionally more. On May 17 he won twenty-eight blocks; these wins gave him fourteen hundred new coins that day.
Satoshi knew someone would eventually spot this opportunity as Bitcoin became more successful and was not surprised when Laszlo e-mailed him about his project. But in responding to Laszlo, Satoshi was clearly torn. If one person was taking all the coins, there would be less of an incentive for new people to join in.
“I don’t mean to sound like a socialist,” Satoshi wrote back. “I don’t care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%.”
As a result, Satoshi asked Laszlo to go easy with the “high powered hashing,” the term coined to refer to the process of plugging an input into a hash function and seeing what it spit out.
But Satoshi also recognized that having more computing power on the network made the network stronger as long as the people with the power, like Laszlo, wanted to see Bitcoin succeed.”
But I am sure there will be people who will deny saying miners can refuse mined blocks and create a branch. And others who will deny this by talking up game theory mechanic of 51% attack - if someone does get 51% power then the rational thing to do is to not harm the coin. This obviously doesn't hold true for an irrational person.
And given the concerns raised for PoW for small coins, I can only say this - "Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It." Here's one of my favorite stories from Nathaniel Popper's Digital Gold about a coin which was very small back in the day called - Bitcoin:
Laszlo’s CPU had been winning, at most, one block of 50 Bitcoins each day, of the approximately 140 blocks that were released daily. Once Laszlo got his GPU card hooked in he began winning one or two blocks an hour, and occasionally more. On May 17 he won twenty-eight blocks; these wins gave him fourteen hundred new coins that day.
Satoshi knew someone would eventually spot this opportunity as Bitcoin became more successful and was not surprised when Laszlo e-mailed him about his project. But in responding to Laszlo, Satoshi was clearly torn. If one person was taking all the coins, there would be less of an incentive for new people to join in.
“I don’t mean to sound like a socialist,” Satoshi wrote back. “I don’t care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%.”
As a result, Satoshi asked Laszlo to go easy with the “high powered hashing,” the term coined to refer to the process of plugging an input into a hash function and seeing what it spit out.
But Satoshi also recognized that having more computing power on the network made the network stronger as long as the people with the power, like Laszlo, wanted to see Bitcoin succeed.”