🤺 [Analysis] Long-tail cryptocurrency is 51% attacked: Vertcoin edition – The Block

While hash rate may go up in absolute terms due to improved ASIC efficiency, hash rate is just a proxy for network security. The key metric to note is security spend, quantifying how much money is spent on mining opex and capex to secure the network.

Websites like Crypto51 track the theoretical cost of attack, while they often don’t reflect real-world constraints of attack, they serve as a useful barometer; particularly with smaller networks that use the same hashing algorithm as larger networks.