Mining pool giant GHash.io reaches 50% of bitcoin hashing power

Yesterday, mining pool giant GHash.io controlled fully half of the hashing power of the entire bitcoin network. For a distributed network that relies on trustless consensus, having the majority of the “voting” power controlled by a single mining pool is more than a little problematic. Most notably, it opens up the bitcoin network to the possibility of a 51% attack, allowing one party to completely control and corrupt the entire system as they see fit.

At the moment, no one is seriously proposing that GHash.io, or it’s parent company CEX.io, is planning on doing any intentional damage to the bitcoin network. In fact, GHash.io appears to largely be the victim of its own success. With a wildly popular, user-friendly mining pool system and consistently high payouts thanks to their massive hash rate, it’s hard to blame GHash.io simply because they’ve created a service miners want to use. Their silence on the 51% issue, however, is deeply troubling to many in the bitcoin network who fear that centralized power of any kind will undermine the fundamental concepts of cryptocurrency.

CEX.io’s CEO Jeffrey Smith posted a tweet about the 51% issue on Wednesday, but has been silent on the issue since.

I want everyone to know – we are aware of the 51% on @ghash_io We would never harm the community. Our official statement is coming soon.

— Jeffrey Smith (@jeff_smith01) June 11, 2014

Neither CEX.io or GHash.io have made any public statement about their swelling hashrate, and thus far do not appear to have taken any significant steps to prevent taking over the majority of the network hashing power. Should GHash.io reach 51%, the impact on bitcoin’s price could be dramatic. With no recourse to such an action in the Bitcoin Core code, and seeming disinterest in the topic from bitcoin’s developers, the situation certainly seems like the key players are asleep at the wheel. While many noted bitcoin authorities have downplayed the possibility of a genuine 51% attack or the need for a Proof-Of-Stake solution, the bitcoin community remains deeply concerned about so much influence being in the hands of a single mining pool.

Interestingly, major bitcoin news site CoinDesk has been completely silent on the GHash.io topic, with no mention of the pool or the major debate recently surrounding it. In fact, there appears to be no reporting on the topic at all on the topic since the last time GHash.io nearly gained a majority of the hashrate in January.