Bitcoin Board
Because of the recent buzz around a possible 51% attack to the Bitcoin blockchain, we think it is time that people start switching over to the P2Pool protocol. P2Pool is a decentralized mining pool, which makes it almost impossible for a 51% to happen, as mining is done through peer-to-peer network nodes.
We will try to explain it as simple as possible: because no one is throwing their mining power at a centralized point (like a pool), nobody can exploit all that power to take over the Blockchain. For a 51% attack a pool needs at least 51% of the total hashing power to make guaranteed double spends. With P2Pool, everybody is just mining on their own node, meaning that no pool will ever reach that amount of hashing power.
At this moment, the 2 biggest Bitcoin mining pools have 59% of the total hashrate. Ghash.io has 38%, and BTCGuild has 21%. If those 2 ever decided to team up together, they would be able to make guaranteed double spends, or even make hard forks to the blockchain. This can ruin the whole system Bitcoin has been build on, so it is absolutely necessary that people start to understand the importance of P2Pool mining.
How to start P2Pool mining
If you want to start mining via the P2Pool system, we advice you to read this detailed guide on the Bitcoin Wiki. It includes a step by step guide with very easy instructions that explain the process thoroughly. That page also has a more detailed explanation about P2Pool mining, if you want to know how it works exactly.
