Related papers: The Miner's Dilemma
This paper proposes a conceptual framework for the analysis of reward sharing schemes in mining pools, such as those associated with Bitcoin. The framework is centered around the reported shares in a pool instead of agents and results in…
We describe and analyze perishing mining, a novel block-withholding mining strategy that lures profit-driven miners away from doing useful work on the public chain by releasing block headers from a privately maintained chain. We then…
The resource-consuming mining of blocks on a blockchain equipped with a proof of work consensus protocol bears the risk of ruin, namely when the operational costs for the mining exceed the received rewards. In this paper we investigate to…
Mining blocks in a blockchain using the \textit{Proof-of-Work} consensus protocol involves significant risk, as network participants face continuous operational costs while earning infrequent capital gains upon successfully mining a block.…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography. Bitcoin economy grows at an incredibly fast rate and is now worth some 10 billions of dollars. Bitcoin mining is an activity which consists of…
In a PoW-based blockchain network, mining pools (the solo miner could be regarded as a mining pool containing one miner) compete to successfully mine blocks to pursue rewards. Generally, the rewards include the fixed block subsidies and…
Bitcoin mining presents a significant economic incentive for efficient hashing and broadcast of data, both parameters stemming from the Proofs of Work used to advance the network. This incentive has led to the development of Bitcoin…
Does the proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of supporting decentralized cryptocurrency mining? To address this question, we develop a game-theoretical model where miners first invest in hardware to improve the efficiency of…
The security of blockchain systems is fundamentally based on the decentralized consensus in which the majority of parties behave honestly, and the content verification process is essential to maintaining the robustness of blockchain…
A soft control of the network activity through varying reward in a proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency is reported. Rewards are the necessity to incent the contributors activities (i.e., mining) in order to maintain the PoW network. Contrary…
Mining in proof-of-work blockchains has become an expensive affair requiring specialized hardware capable of executing several megahashes per second at huge electricity costs. Miners earn a reward each time they mine a block within the…
The consensus protocol named proof of work (PoW) is widely applied by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Although security of a PoW cryptocurrency is always the top priority, it is threatened by mining attacks like selfish mining. Researchers…
We study game-theoretic models for capturing participation in blockchain systems. Permissionless blockchains can be naturally viewed as games, where a set of potentially interested users is faced with the dilemma of whether to engage with…
Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency that records alltransactions in a distributed append-only public ledger calledblockchain. The security of Bitcoin heavily relies on the incentive-compatible proof-of-work (PoW) based distributed consensus…
We consider blockchain in dynamic networks. We define the Blockchain Decision Problem. It requires miners that maintain the blockchain to confirm whether a particular block is accepted. We establish the necessary conditions for the…
We study the strategic implications that arise from adding one extra option to the miners participating in the bitcoin protocol. We propose that when adding a block, miners also have the ability to pay forward an amount to be collected by…
Mining pools, the main components of the Bitcoin network, dominate the computing resources and play essential roles in network security and performance aspects. Although many existing measurements of the Bitcoin network are available,…
Mining attacks enable an adversary to procure a disproportionately large portion of mining rewards by deviating from honest mining practices within the PoW-based blockchain system. In this paper, we demonstrate that the security…
Eyal and Sirer's selfish mining strategy has demonstrated that Bitcoin system is not secure even if 50% of total mining power is held by altruistic miners. Since then, researchers have been investigating either to improve the efficiency of…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a Sybil control mechanism adopted in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. It prevents the attempt of malicious actors to manipulate distributed ledgers. Bitcoin has successfully suppressed double-spending by accepting…