I have an NXT wallet with around 50 Nxt. I know I won't forge probably anything with that. But would forging with 50 nxt protect the network as much as forging with 50,000,000 NXT. Or the more you have the better it's protected?
Nxt uses the Proof-of-Stake consensus system. The more stake(NXT) you have the more power you have to protect the network. Blockchains always want to protect themselves for 51% attacks, so if anyone has more than 51% of NXT, they could be able to create there own fork and do stuff like double spends. So the more people who forge, the less chance a hacker gets to manipulate the network. Sidenote: you need at least 1000 NXT to be able to forge. And you can lease your NXT to a leasing pool and you will get a percentage of what they are earning.
I forgot that you needed at least 1000. Also, if some one has 51% of NXT, how exactly can they fork it? I mean wouldn't code have to be involved.
If you rule the majority of a blockchains token (51% attack can happen in Bitcoin too) you can somehow (don't know how) confirm your own branches. More info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nxt. Nxt uses Proof-of-Stake instead of Proof-of-Work, such as Bitcoin does. Proof-of-Stake is better protected against 51% attacks because of the economic reason. You have to buy 51% of the coins (about $ 7 Million) and this demand will increase the price heavy. So probably they will pay $70 Million (just a prediction). Watch more info about Nothing-at-stake too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIl3vmEytYBitcoin use Proof-of-Work (mining) and the miningpools control big parts of the Bitcoin hashrate (
https://blockchain.info/pools), when they together reach 51% of the hashrate they can start spam the network. They don't have to buy coins, they just point their mining rigs to Bitcoin-mining (instead of another altcoin).
Hope this helps you understand. This mechanism was one of the reasons I joined Nxt, they think different and are more safe.
