In this section
@inproceedings{Zamyatin:2017:10.1109/MASCOTS.2017.22,
author = {Zamyatin, A and Wolter, K and Werner, S and Mulligan, CEA and Harrison, PG and Knottenbelt, WJ},
doi = {10.1109/MASCOTS.2017.22},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Swimming with fishes and sharks: beneath the surface of queue-based ethereum mining pools},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MASCOTS.2017.22},
year = {2017}
}
TY - CPAPER
AB - Cryptocurrency mining can be said to be the modernalchemy, involving as it does the transmutation of electricityinto digital gold. The goal of mining is to guess the solutionto a cryptographic puzzle, the difficulty of which is determinedby the network, and thence to win the block reward andtransaction fees. Because the return on solo mining has a veryhigh variance, miners band together to create so-called miningpools. These aggregate the power of several individual miners,and, by distributing the accumulated rewards according to somescheme, ensure a more predictable return for participants.In this paper we formulate a model of the dynamics of a queue-based reward distribution scheme in a popular Ethereum miningpool and develop a corresponding simulation. We show that theunderlying mechanism disadvantages miners with above-averagehash rates. We then consider two-miner scenarios and show howlarge miners may perform attacks to increase their profits at theexpense of other participants of the mining pool. The outcomes ofour analysis show the queue-based reward scheme is vulnerableto manipulation in its current implementation.
AU - Zamyatin,A
AU - Wolter,K
AU - Werner,S
AU - Mulligan,CEA
AU - Harrison,PG
AU - Knottenbelt,WJ
DO - 10.1109/MASCOTS.2017.22
PB - IEEE
PY - 2017///
TI - Swimming with fishes and sharks: beneath the surface of queue-based ethereum mining pools
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MASCOTS.2017.22
UR - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8107436
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/49112
ER -
Prof William Knottenbelt
Centre Director
Email: w.knottenbelt@imperial.ac.uk
Dr Ying-Ying Hsieh
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