The Mining Selection in Multi-pools Under Block WithHolding Attack
Jianyong Tuo, Guangyu Qin, Kailun Shang, Youqing Wang · 2022 41st Chinese Control Conference (CCC) · 2022
Recently, Bitcoin, as a popular digital currency, is getting more and more attention. It uses the proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to generate blocks, thus creating a new type of mining method. In this mining mode, there is a network attack named block withholding(BWH) attack, where some pools attack others by infiltrating miners who only submit partial proof-of-work and discard full proof of work. Previously, many researchers have analyzed its impact. However, their researches are based on the case of two mining pools, which is too far from the actual number of mining pools and has no commonalities. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel model built by the evolutionary game theory for analysing BWH attack in multiple mining pools. Simulation results show that only launching a BWH attack may not necessarily help the mining pools attract miners, and the attack time also plays an vital role.