TY - GEN
T1 - When bitcoin mining pools run dry
T2 - International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2015 2nd Workshop on Bitcoin Research BITCOIN 2015, 3rd Workshop on Encrypted Computing and Applied Homomorphic Cryptography, WAHC 2015, and 1st Workshop on Wearable Security and Privacy, Wearable 2015
AU - Laszka, Aron
AU - Johnson, Benjamin
AU - Grossklags, Jens
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© International Financial Cryptography Association 2015.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Bitcoin has established itself as the most successful cryptocurrency with adoption seen in many commercial scenarios. While most stakeholders have jointly benefited from the growing importance of Bitcoin, conflicting interests continue to negatively impact the ecosystem. In particular, incentives to derive short-term profits from attacks on mining pools threaten the long-term viability of Bitcoin. We develop a game-theoretic model that allows us to capture short-term as well as long-term impacts of attacks against mining pools. Using this model, we study the conditions under which the mining pools have no incentives to launch attacks against each other (i.e., peaceful equilibria), and the conditions under which one mining pool is marginalized by attacks (i.e., one-sided attack equilibria). Our results provide guidelines for ensuring that the Bitcoin ecosystem remains long-term viable and trustworthy.
AB - Bitcoin has established itself as the most successful cryptocurrency with adoption seen in many commercial scenarios. While most stakeholders have jointly benefited from the growing importance of Bitcoin, conflicting interests continue to negatively impact the ecosystem. In particular, incentives to derive short-term profits from attacks on mining pools threaten the long-term viability of Bitcoin. We develop a game-theoretic model that allows us to capture short-term as well as long-term impacts of attacks against mining pools. Using this model, we study the conditions under which the mining pools have no incentives to launch attacks against each other (i.e., peaceful equilibria), and the conditions under which one mining pool is marginalized by attacks (i.e., one-sided attack equilibria). Our results provide guidelines for ensuring that the Bitcoin ecosystem remains long-term viable and trustworthy.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84950249506&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84950249506&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-662-48051-9_5
DO - 10.1007/978-3-662-48051-9_5
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84950249506
SN - 9783662480502
SN - 9783662480502
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 63
EP - 77
BT - Financial Cryptography and Data Security - FC 2015 International Workshops BITCOIN, WAHC, and Wearable, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Christin, Nicolas
A2 - Rohloff, Kurt
A2 - Brenner, Michael
A2 - Christin, Nicolas
A2 - Brenner, Michael
A2 - Johnson, Benjamin
A2 - Johnson, Benjamin
A2 - Rohloff, Kurt
PB - Springer Verlag
Y2 - 30 January 2015 through 30 January 2015
ER -