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Comment by distortedsignal | Hacker News Reader

I think the answer to why one chain is better than many chains is because it’s way harder to 51% one chain with many applications rather than having to 51% one chain with one application.

I don’t know enough about blockchain tech to KNOW this is correct, but it’s something interesting that kinda falls out of the theory.

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You hit the nail on the head, I'd say. If there is one chain, you need to amass 51% to attack it, which is nearly impossible. If there are 100 chains with 1% of the total hash rate each, you just need to control 0.51% of the total hash rate to take over one of those chains.

This is technically correct, but a lot of applications that use blockchain store the proofs on multiple chains, which in your example is equivalent in hashpower to one big chain. Also you are describing PoW and lots of chains are not PoW now.

I guess the natural response would be that the companies running these myriad chains simply wouldn't care about abstract cybersecurity concerns like 51% attacks, but instead selling services to users. Just consider all of the companies today which have horrible security. The main factor that they care about is whether their business will get attacked in practice, which is infrequent enough that it always makes the news.

If a company didn't care about security or other "abstract cybersecurity concerns" and instead only cared about selling something to their users, why would they use something like blockchain which is entirely based on abstract technical and cybersecurity concepts instead of existing web technologies which are more efficient and easier to use?

In this scenario, presumably so that it can market itself as a Web3 company, which is the Future of the Internet™ and will attract investors. After all, the vast majority of NFT buyers and other crypto holders are in it to make money for free, not because they want to buy and sell real-world goods and services; as long as their money doesn't get stolen, they don't really care about the cybersecurity aspects. Even when cryptocurrencies are used as a medium of exchange or transfer, the main cited advantage is ease of use. I suspect that this comes only from the lack of regulations, and that it will die once governments start cracking down on exchanges, but perhaps I'm just being too pessimistic.

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