Related papers: Socially Optimal Mining Pools
In cryptocurrencies, the block reward is meant to serve as the incentive mechanism for miners to commit resources to create blocks and in effect secure the system. Existing systems primarily divide the reward in proportion to expended…
"Pay-per-last-$N$-shares" (PPLNS) is one of the most common payout strategies used by mining pools in Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies. As with any payment scheme, it is imperative to study issues of incentive compatibility of miners…
Bitcoin mining is a wasteful and resource-intensive process. To add a block of transactions to the blockchain, miners spend a considerable amount of energy. The Bitcoin protocol, named 'proof of work' (PoW), resembles a lottery and the…
We study the strategic considerations of miners participating in the bitcoin's protocol. We formulate and study the stochastic game that underlies these strategic considerations. The miners collectively build a tree of blocks, and they are…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus is traditionally analyzed under the assumption that all miners incur similar costs per unit of computational effort. In reality, costs vary due to factors such as regional electricity cost differences and…
Since Bitcoin's inception in 2008, it has became attractive investments for both trading and mining. To mine Bitcoins, a miner has to invest in computing power and pay for electricity to solve cryptographic puzzles for rewards, if it…
Mining blocks on a blockchain equipped with a proof of work consensus protocol is well-known to be resource-consuming. A miner bears the operational cost, mainly electricity consumption and IT gear, of mining, and is compensated by a…
Bitcoin-NG, a scalable blockchain protocol, divides each block into a key block and many micro blocks to effectively improve the transaction processing capacity. Bitcoin-NG has a special incentive mechanism (i.e. splitting transaction fees…
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…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a popular consensus protocol used by Bitcoin since its inception. PoW has the well-known flaw of assigning all the reward to the single miner (or pool) that inserts the new block. This has the consequence of making…
The security of Bitcoin protocols is deeply dependent on the incentives provided to miners, which come from a combination of block rewards and transaction fees. As Bitcoin experiences more halving events, the protocol reward converges to…
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…
In blockchain networks adopting the proof-of-work schemes, the monetary incentive is introduced by the Nakamoto consensus protocol to guide the behaviors of the full nodes (i.e., block miners) in the process of maintaining the consensus…
We propose a mean field game model to study the question of how centralization of reward and computational power occur in Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Miners compete against each other for mining rewards by increasing their computational…
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…
Background: During the last years, there has been a lot of discussion and estimations on the energy consumption of Bitcoin miners. However, most of the studies are focused on estimating energy consumption, not in exploring the factors that…
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…
Blockchain, an emerging decentralized security system, has been applied in many applications, such as bitcoin, smart grid, and Internet-of-Things. However, running the mining process may cost too much energy consumption and computing…
We develop a dynamic model of the Bitcoin market where users set fees themselves and miners decide whether to operate and whom to validate based on those fees. Our analysis reveals how, in equilibrium, users adjust their bids in response to…