Selfish Mining Time-Averaged Analysis in Bitcoin: Is Orphan Reporting an Effective Countermeasure?

IF 6.3 1区 计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, THEORY & METHODS IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security Pub Date : 2024-12-16 DOI:10.1109/TIFS.2024.3518090
Roozbeh Sarenche;Ren Zhang;Svetla Nikova;Bart Preneel
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Abstract

A Bitcoin miner who owns a sufficient amount of mining power can perform selfish mining to increase its relative revenue. Studies have demonstrated that the time-averaged profit of a selfish miner starts to rise once the mining difficulty level gets adjusted in favor of the attacker. Selfish mining profitability lies in the fact that orphan blocks are not incorporated into the current version of Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment mechanism (DAM). Therefore, it is believed that considering the count of orphan blocks in the DAM can result in complete unprofitability for selfish mining. In this paper, we disprove this belief by providing a formal analysis of the selfish mining time-averaged profit. We present a precise definition of the orphan blocks that can be incorporated into calculating the next epoch’s target and then introduce two modified versions of DAM in which both main-chain blocks and orphan blocks are incorporated. We propose two versions of smart intermittent selfish mining, where the first one dominates the normal intermittent selfish mining, and the second one results in selfish mining profitability under the modified DAMs. Moreover, we present the orphan exclusion attack with the help of which the attacker can stop honest miners from reporting the orphan blocks. Using combinatorial tools, we analyze the profitability of selfish mining accompanied by the orphan exclusion attack under the modified DAMs. Our results show that even when considering orphan blocks in the DAM, selfish mining can still be profitable. However, the level of profitability under the modified DAMs is significantly lower than that observed under the current version of Bitcoin DAM, suggesting that orphan reporting can be an effective countermeasure against a payoff-maximizing selfish miner.
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比特币的自私挖矿时间平均分析:孤儿报告是有效的对策吗?
拥有足够挖矿能力的比特币矿工可以进行自私挖矿,以增加其相对收入。研究表明,一旦挖矿难度水平被调整为有利于攻击者,自私矿工的时间平均利润就会开始上升。自私的挖矿盈利能力在于孤儿区块没有被纳入当前版本的比特币难度调整机制(DAM)。因此,我们认为考虑到DAM中孤儿区块的数量会导致自私采矿完全无利可图。在本文中,我们通过对自私采矿时间平均利润的形式化分析来证明这一观点是错误的。我们提出了孤儿区块的精确定义,可以纳入计算下一个epoch的目标,然后引入了两个修改版本的DAM,其中包括主链区块和孤儿区块。我们提出了两种版本的智能间歇性自私挖矿,其中第一个版本在正常的间歇性自私挖矿中占主导地位,第二个版本在修改后的大坝下产生自私挖矿盈利能力。此外,我们提出了孤儿排斥攻击,攻击者可以阻止诚实的矿工报告孤儿区块。利用组合工具,分析了在改进的dam条件下,伴随孤儿排斥攻击的自私挖矿的盈利能力。我们的研究结果表明,即使考虑到DAM中的孤儿区块,自私采矿仍然是有利可图的。然而,修改后的DAM的盈利水平明显低于当前版本的比特币DAM,这表明孤儿报告可以成为对抗收益最大化自私矿工的有效对策。
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来源期刊
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 工程技术-工程:电子与电气
CiteScore
14.40
自引率
7.40%
发文量
234
审稿时长
6.5 months
期刊介绍: The IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security covers the sciences, technologies, and applications relating to information forensics, information security, biometrics, surveillance and systems applications that incorporate these features
期刊最新文献
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