TY - JOUR
T1 - Game-theoretical analysis of mining strategy for Bitcoin-NG blockchain protocol
AU - Wang, Taotao
AU - Bai, Xiaoqian
AU - Wang, Hao
AU - Liew, Soung Chang
AU - Zhang, Shengli
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received January 17, 2020; revised March 11, 2020 and June 16, 2020; accepted June 18, 2020. Date of publication July 10, 2020; date of current version June 7, 2021. This work was supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2018YFB2100705, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61701311 and 61771315, in part by the Guangdong NSF Project under Grant 2017A030310334, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen under Grant JCYJ20170818095107583, and in part by a grant from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). (Corresponding author: Shengli Zhang.) Taotao Wang, Xiaoqian Bai, and Shengli Zhang are with the College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shen-zhen 518060, China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]).
Funding Information:
Dr. Wang is a recipient of the Washington Research Foundation Innovation Fellowship, the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2007-2012 IEEE.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Bitcoin-NG (next generation), a scalable blockchain protocol, divides each block into a key block and many microblocks to effectively improve the transaction processing capacity. Bitcoin-NG has a special incentive mechanism (i.e., splitting transaction fees to the current and the next leader) to maintain its security. However, this incentive mechanism ignores the joint effect of transaction fees, mint coins, and mining duration lengths on the expected mining reward. In this article, we identify the advanced mining attack that deliberately ignores microblocks to enlarge the mining-duration length to increase the likelihood of winning the mining race. We first show that an advanced mining attacker can maximize its expected reward by optimizing its mining-duration length. We then formulate a game-theoretical model in which multiple mining players perform advanced mining to compete with each other. We analyze the Nash equilibrium for the mining game. Our analytical and simulation results indicate that all mining players in the mining game converge to having advanced mining at the equilibrium and have no incentives for deviating from the equilibrium; the transaction processing capability of Bitcoin-NG at the equilibrium is decreased by advanced mining. Therefore, we conclude that the Bitcoin-NG blockchain protocol is vulnerable to advanced mining.
AB - Bitcoin-NG (next generation), a scalable blockchain protocol, divides each block into a key block and many microblocks to effectively improve the transaction processing capacity. Bitcoin-NG has a special incentive mechanism (i.e., splitting transaction fees to the current and the next leader) to maintain its security. However, this incentive mechanism ignores the joint effect of transaction fees, mint coins, and mining duration lengths on the expected mining reward. In this article, we identify the advanced mining attack that deliberately ignores microblocks to enlarge the mining-duration length to increase the likelihood of winning the mining race. We first show that an advanced mining attacker can maximize its expected reward by optimizing its mining-duration length. We then formulate a game-theoretical model in which multiple mining players perform advanced mining to compete with each other. We analyze the Nash equilibrium for the mining game. Our analytical and simulation results indicate that all mining players in the mining game converge to having advanced mining at the equilibrium and have no incentives for deviating from the equilibrium; the transaction processing capability of Bitcoin-NG at the equilibrium is decreased by advanced mining. Therefore, we conclude that the Bitcoin-NG blockchain protocol is vulnerable to advanced mining.
KW - Bitcoin-NG (next generation)
KW - blockchain
KW - game theory
KW - incentive mechanism
KW - mining strategy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85110925267&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/JSYST.2020.3004468
DO - 10.1109/JSYST.2020.3004468
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85110925267
SN - 1932-8184
VL - 15
SP - 2708
EP - 2719
JO - IEEE Systems Journal
JF - IEEE Systems Journal
IS - 2
ER -