Justin Drake says Ethereum resists 51% attacks better than Bitcoin

According to Justin Drake, a researcher focused on Ethereum, executing a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network could cost as little as $10 billion—making attackers find it far more affordable than doing the same on Ethereum.

As a principal developer of Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism, Justin Drake played an instrumental role in planning and executing the Merge, which transitioned the blockchain entirely to PoS.

Drake’s statements reflect sentiments Grant Hummer shared earlier on May 14 in an X post. Hummer, the co-founder of Etherealize, a company centered on Ethereum marketing and product work, pointed out in his X post that Bitcoin “is completely screwed because of its security budget.”

In Hummer’s view, attackers can launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin at a cost of only $8 billion today, and once the cost falls to $2 billion, an attack will happen.

Attackers who control more than 50% of a blockchain’s mining or staking power can execute a 51% attack and assert dominance over the network. Hummer added:

“This will become blindingly obvious over the next decade. ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto-asset that can become the internet’s [store of value].“

Drake said, “to have 100% control of the chain, you need 50% + 1 of stake.”

He emphasized that despite the high difficulty and cost involved, attackers can still achieve the feat.

“A rich nation state can probably pull it off.“

At the time of writing, investors staked a total of 34,168,987 Ether, valued at almost $89.6 billion.

Half of the total ETH, accordingly, has a present-day value of almost $44.8 billion.

However, attackers would probably need to invest far more. Ether’s market cap currently sits at $316 billion, while its 24-hour trading volume reaches $25 billion—just above 8% of that market cap.

An attacker would need to buy ETH worth close to 14.2% of the market capitalization, which is also 180% of the 24-hour trading volume.

Undertaking such a large purchase would likely cause ETH prices to surge, which would subsequently increase the cost required for the attack.

Matan Sitbon, who leads Lightblocks as its founder and CEO, highlighted that Ethereum employs an extra security measure to counter such threats.

“Ethereum’s ultimate security lies not solely in cryptography or protocol rules, but in the community’s powerful social and economic coordination mechanisms,“ he said.

Drake highlighted an additional edge Ethereum holds over Bitcoin, stating that during a 51% attack, the social layer can recognize the attacker and enforce social slashing.

“This is a superpower of PoS that is not available with PoW,“ he added.

By social layer, Drake means the human supermajority within the network that governs the choice of software execution.

Though Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus is simpler and boasts a longer history of stability with fewer attack vectors, it does not possess this particular function.

Pavel Yashin of P2P.org mentioned that the community could intervene by initiating a new fork upon detecting centralization.

Delisting the old token would cause the compromised blockchain to become insignificant.

Hassan Khan, CEO at Bitcoin liquidity protocol Ordeez, observed that “the debate around the feasibility of a 51% attack remains open-ended — largely because while theoretically possible, in practice the barriers are extremely high.”

He noted that attackers would find a sustained attack unlikely on Bitcoin due to the massive computing and energy demands, but Ethereum’s PoS framework provides further economic and governance protections.