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Related papers: Selfish Mining under General Stochastic Rewards

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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…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2018-09-18 Rui Tian , Wei Gong

Bitcoin is a representative decentralized currency system. For the security of Bitcoin, fairness in the distribution of mining rewards plays a crucial role in preventing the concentration of computational power in a few miners. Here,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Akira Sakurai , Kazuyuki Shudo

We analyze Bitcoin mining from the perspective of a game and propose an optimal mining model that maximizes profits of pools and miners. The model is a two-stage Stackelberg game in which each stage forms a sub-game. In stage I, pools are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-22 David Lajeunesse , Hugo D. Scolnik

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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2014-12-03 Nicolas T. Courtois , Lear Bahack

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-05-21 Elias Koutsoupias , Philip Lazos , Paolo Serafino , Foluso Ogunlana

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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-04-17 Cyril Grunspan , Ricardo Pérez-Marco

The rewards a blockchain miner earns vary with time. Most of the time is spent mining without receiving any rewards, and only occasionally the miner wins a block and earns a reward. Mining pools smoothen the stochastic flow of rewards, and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Axel Cortes-Cubero , Juan P. Madrigal-Cianci , Kiran Karra , Zixuan Zhang

Traditionally, peer-to-peer systems have relied on altruism and reciprocity. Although incentive-based models have gained prominence in new-generation peer-to-peer systems, it is essential to recognize the continued importance of cooperative…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-08-15 Bulat Nasrulin , Rowdy Chotkan , Johan Pouwelse

Bitcoin was recently introduced as a peer-to-peer electronic currency in order to facilitate transactions outside the traditional financial system. The core of Bitcoin, the Blockchain, is the history of the transactions in the system…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2017-05-04 Siamak Solat , Maria Potop-Butucaru

Following the publication of Bitcoin's arguably most famous attack, selfish mining, various works have introduced mechanisms to enhance blockchain systems' game theoretic resilience. Some reward mechanisms, like FruitChains, have been shown…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-14 Lukas Aumayr , Zeta Avarikioti , Dimitris Karakostas , Karl Kreder , Shreekara Shastry

A blockchain, such as Bitcoin, is an append-only, secure, transparent, distributed ledger. A fair blockchain is expected to have healthy metrics; high honest mining power, low processing latency, i.e., low wait times for transactions and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Shoeb Siddiqui , Ganesh Vanahalli , Sujit Gujar

Blockchain systems often employ proof-of-work consensus protocols to validate and add transactions into hashchains. These protocols stimulate competition among miners in solving cryptopuzzles (e.g. SHA-256 hash computation in Bitcoin) in…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-05-13 Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla , Lav R. Varshney

Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity due to their transparency, security, and accessibility compared to traditional financial systems, with Bitcoin, introduced in 2009, leading the market. Bitcoin's security relies on blockchain…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Dinitha Wijewardhana , Sugandima Vidanagamachchi , Nalin Arachchilage

This work proposes a novel proof-of-work blockchain incentive scheme such that, barring exogenous motivations, following the protocol is guaranteed to be the optimal strategy for miners. Our blockchain takes the form of a directed acyclic…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Jakub Sliwinski , Roger Wattenhofer

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-25 Zongxi Li , A. Max Reppen , Ronnie Sircar

Most current assessments use ex post proxies that miss uncertainty and fail to consistently capture the rapid change in bitcoin mining. We introduce a unified, ex ante statistical model that derives expected return, downside risk, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Yuting Cai , Ruthav Sadali , Korok Ray , Chao Tian

Cryptocurrencies employ auction-esque transaction fee mechanisms (TFMs) to allocate transactions to blocks, and to determine how much fees miners can collect from transactions. Several impossibility results show that TFMs that satisfy a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Yotam Gafni , Aviv Yaish

In a Proof-of-Work blockchain such as Bitcoin mining hashrate is increasing in the block reward. An increase in hashrate reduces network vulnerability to attack (a reduction in security cost) while increasing carbon emissions and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-08-25 Daniel Aronoff

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to maintain transactions order and provides probabilistic guarantee to prevent double-spending, assuming that an attacker's computational power does not exceed %50 of the network power. In this paper, we…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Ghader Ebrahimpour , Mohammad Sayad Haghighi

Blockchain protocols incentivize participation through monetary rewards, assuming rational actors behave honestly to maximize their gains. However, attackers may attempt to harm others even at personal cost. These denial of profit attacks…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-02 Arian Baloochestani , Leander Jehl