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Related papers: Efficient MDP Analysis for Selfish-Mining in Block…

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Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide an efficient way to model real-world sequential decision making processes. Motivated by the problem of maintenance and inspection of a group of infrastructure components with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-15 Manav Vora , Pranay Thangeda , Michael N. Grussing , Melkior Ornik

In this paper, we provide a novel dynamic decision method of blockchain selfish mining by applying the sensitivity-based optimization theory. Our aim is to find the optimal dynamic blockchain-pegged policy of the dishonest mining pool. To…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-11-16 Jing-Yu Ma , Quan-Lin Li

Cryptocurrency miners have great latitude in deciding which transactions they accept, including their own, and the order in which they accept them. Ethereum miners in particular use this flexibility to collect MEV-Miner Extractable Value-by…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-03-31 Julien Piet , Jaiden Fairoze , Nicholas Weaver

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely adopted incentive model in current blockchain systems, which unfortunately is energy inefficient. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is then proposed to tackle the energy issue. The rich-get-richer concern of PoS…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-03-31 Yuming Huang , Jing Tang , Qianhao Cong , Andrew Lim , Jianliang Xu

Mining is a central operation of all proof-of-work (PoW) based cryptocurrencies. The vast majority of miners today participate in "mining pools" instead of "solo mining" in order to lower risk and achieve a more steady income. However, this…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2022-12-15 Panagiotis Chatzigiannis , Foteini Baldimtsi , Igor Griva , Jiasun Li

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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-05-12 Junjie Hu , Na Ruan

We study the incentives behind double-spend attacks on Nakamoto-style Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies. In these systems, miners are allowed to choose which transactions to reference with their block, and a common strategy for selecting…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-14 Yanni Georghiades , Rajesh Mishra , Karl Kreder , Sriram Vishwanath

We revisit the longstanding open problem of implementing Nakamoto's proof-of-work (PoW) consensus based on a real-world computational task $T(x)$ (as opposed to artificial random hashing), in a truly permissionless setting where the miner…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Ilan Komargodski , Omri Weinstein

We study selfish mining in Ethereum. The problem is combinatorially more complex than in Bitcoin because of major differences in the reward system and a different difficulty adjustment formula. Equivalent strategies in Bitcoin do have…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-05-01 Cyril Grunspan , Ricardo Pérez-Marco

Mining for Bitcoins is a high-risk high-reward activity. Miners, seeking to reduce their variance and earn steadier rewards, collaborate in pooling strategies where they jointly mine for Bitcoins. Whenever some pool participant is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-03-14 Ben A. Fisch , Rafael Pass , Abhi Shelat

Safety in stochastic control systems, which are subject to random noise with a known probability distribution, aims to compute policies that satisfy predefined operational constraints with high confidence throughout the uncertain evolution…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-12 Saber Omidi , Marek Petrik , Se Young Yoon , Momotaz Begum

It is interesting but difficult and challenging to study Ethereum with multiple mining pools. One of the main difficulties comes from not only how to represent such a general tree with multiple block branches (or sub-chains) related to the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-01-26 Quan-Lin Li , Yan-Xia Chang , Chi Zhang

Envisioned to be the future of secured distributed systems, blockchain networks have received increasing attention from both the industry and academia in recent years. However, blockchain mining processes demand high hardware costs and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Minghong Fang , Jia Liu

Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) prescribes how to maximise the return of an asset portfolio for a given level of risk. The optimal trade-off between return and variance defines the efficient frontier. Whether actual cryptoasset portfolios…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Ivan Vynyavskyy , Stefan Kitzler , Bernhard Haslhofer , Aviv Yaish

We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Navdeep Kumar , Yashaswini Murthy , Itai Shufaro , Kfir Y. Levy , R. Srikant , Shie Mannor

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…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2023-08-30 Arti Vedula , Abhishek Gupta , Shaileshh Bojja Venkatakrishnan

A key component of security in decentralized blockchains is proof of opportunity cost among block producers. In the case of proof-of-work (PoW), currently used by the most prominent systems, the cost is due to spent computation. In this…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-12-08 George Bissias , Rainer Böhme , David Thibodeau , Brian N. Levine

Many of today's crypto currencies use blockchains as decentralized ledgers and secure them with proof of work. In case of a fork of the chain, Bitcoin's rule for achieving consensus is selecting the longest chain and discarding the other…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2018-08-13 Fabian Ritz , Alf Zugenmaier

Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies rely on a balance of security and fairness in order to maintain a sustainable ecosystem of miners and users. Users demand fast and consistent transaction confirmation, and in exchange drive the adoption…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Patrik Keller , Ben Glickenhaus , George Bissias , Gregory Griffith

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism where nodes spend computing resources and earn rewards in return for spending these resources. This incentive system has caused power to be significantly biased towards a…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-09-04 Yujin Kwon , Jian Liu , Minjeong Kim , Dawn Song , Yongdae Kim