Why is the blockchain immutable?

Technology CommunityCategory: BlockchainWhy is the blockchain immutable?
VietMX Staff asked 3 years ago

Altering a single block requires a new signature for every other block that comes after it all the way to the end of the chain. This is considered to be near impossible. Why?

Let’s say a corrupt miner has altered a block of transactions and is now trying to calculate new signatures for the subsequent blocks in order to have the rest of the network accept his change. The problem for him is, the rest of the network is also calculating new signatures for new blocks. The corrupt miner will have to calculate new signatures for these blocks too as they are being added to the end of the chain. After all, he needs to keep all of the blocks linked, including the new ones constantly being added. Unless the miner has more computational power than the rest of the network combined, he will never catch up with the rest of the network finding signatures.

Millions of users are mining on the blockchain, and therefore it can be assumed that a single bad actor or entity on the network will never have more computational power than the rest of the network combined, meaning the network will never accept any changes on the blockchain, making the blockchain immutable.