Related papers: Mind the Mining
Selfish Mining is strategic rule-breaking to maximize rewards in proof-of-work protocols [3] and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are the preferred tool for finding optimal strategies in Bitcoin [4, 10] and similar linear chain protocols…
The main goal of this article is to present a direct approach for the formula giving the long-term apparent hashrates of Selfish Mining strategies using only elementary probabilities and combinatorics, more precisely, Dyck words. We can…
Blockchain is a distributed ledger, which is protected against malicious modifications by means of cryptographic tools, e.g. digital signatures and hash functions. One of the most prominent applications of blockchains is cryptocurrencies,…
Stratum, the de-facto mining communication protocol used by blockchain based cryptocurrency systems, enables miners to reliably and efficiently fetch jobs from mining pool servers. In this paper we exploit Stratum's lack of encryption to…
Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies prioritize transactions based on their fees, creating a unique kind of fee market. Empirically, this market has failed to yield stable equilibria with predictable prices for desired levels of service. We…
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…
Selfish mining, which is an attack on the integrity of the Bitcoin network, was first proposed by Cornell researchers Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal in 2013. Selfish mining attack also exists in most Nakamoto consensus protocols. Generally…
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…
Cryptocurrency mining in the browser has the potential to provide a new pay-as-you-go monetisation mechanism for consuming digital media over the Web. However, browser mining has recently received strong criticism due to illegitimate use of…
We make several contributions that quantify the real-time hash rate and therefore the consensus of a blockchain. We show that by using only the hash value of blocks, we can estimate and measure the hash rate of all miners or individual…
Blockchain is rapidly emerging as an important class of network application, with a unique set of trust, security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants record and update the `server-side' state of an application…
All public blockchains are secured by a proof of opportunity cost among block producers. For example, the security offered by proof-of-work (PoW) systems, like Bitcoin, is due to spent computation; it is work precisely because it cannot be…
The value of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies critically depends on miners having incentives to follow the protocol. However, the Bitcoin mining protocol proposed by Nakamoto (2008) and implemented in practice is well known not to constitute…
Most cryptocurrencies rely on Proof-of-Work (PoW) "mining" for resistance to Sybil and double-spending attacks, as well as a mechanism for currency issuance. Hashcash PoW has successfully secured the Bitcoin network since its inception,…
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…
We compute and compare profitabilities of stubborn mining strategies that are variations of selfish mining. These are deviant mining strategies violating Bitcoin's network protocol rules. We apply the foundational set-up from our previous…
Applications of cyber technologies improve the quality of monitoring and decision making in smart grid. These cyber technologies are vulnerable to malicious attacks, and compromising them can have serious technical and economical problems.…
Mining is rapidly evolving into an AI driven cyber physical ecosystem where safety and operational reliability depend on robust perception, trustworthy distributed intelligence, and continuous monitoring of miners and equipment. However,…
With the onset of the Information Era and the rapid growth of information technology, ample space for processing and extracting data has opened up. However, privacy concerns may stifle expansion throughout this area. The challenge of…
While cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications continue to gain popularity, their energy cost is evidently becoming unsustainable. In most instances, the main cost comes from the required amount of energy for the Proof-of-Work, and this…