Journal
2021 IEEE 45TH ANNUAL COMPUTERS, SOFTWARE, AND APPLICATIONS CONFERENCE (COMPSAC 2021)
Volume -, Issue -, Pages 694-703Publisher
IEEE COMPUTER SOC
DOI: 10.1109/COMPSAC51774.2021.00101
Keywords
Blockchain; consensus protocol; selfish mining; propagation delay
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2020YFC1523203]
- Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDA20080200]
- Blockchain Technology and Application Joint Laboratory, Guiyang Academy of Information Technology (Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences Guiyang Branch)
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This study explores the impact of multiple miners and propagation delay on selfish mining in Bitcoin. A new selfish mining strategy is proposed to address these factors, and a simulation approach is designed to analyze its performance. Empirical findings show that blockchain systems with higher orphan rates are more vulnerable to selfish mining attacks.
Bitcoin has emerged as a popular decentralized cryptocurrency and attracted much attention from the public. Bitcoin embodies the Nakamoto consensus to reach an agreement about its blockchain ledger. However, the Nakamoto consensus can suffer from selfish mining attacks. Existing studies on selfish mining usually assume that the total mining power is divided into two parts (i.e., honest and selfish), and ignore propagation delay among miners. The assumptions cannot reflect real-world scenarios, in which multiple miners generate blocks at a fixed interval and propagate them with certain delay. Therefore, it is unknown how the practical factors, i.e., multiple miners and propagation delay, can affect selfish mining. In this paper, we explore the impact of multiple miners and propagation delay on selfish mining. First, we propose a new selfish mining strategy that can handle these factors. Second, we design a simulation approach to analyze the performance of the new selfish mining strategy. From our empirical study we observe many interesting findings that can be utilized in combating selfish mining. For example, the blockchain system with a higher orphan rate is more vulnerable to the selfish mining attack.
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