Questions tagged [selfish-mining]

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What verb best describes "causing another block to become stale"?

For example, suppose I'm selfish mining; you publish a block and then I immediately publish two, what did I do to your block? Similarly, if I'm executing a double-spend attack, my goal is to ?___? the ...
MicahW's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is the difference between Selfish Mining and Block Withholding attacks?

I found contradicting information about these two attacks. My understanding is roughly this: Selfish mining is a strategy followed by a miner/pool, in which it doesn't publish new blocks in order to ...
FedFranz's user avatar
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Selfish mining attack: Probability of block being mined - CS251 exam question

I am currently studying for the CS251 Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies exam. In a past exam, there is this question without an answer and I would really appreciate your help so that I can ...
Python-Data-Science-Learner's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
208 views

Known cases of block-withholding attacks

At the moment I am doing a course about Bitcoin. The topic of the last session was the block-withholding attack and the course (being from 2014) claimed that there are no known attacks so far. Is ...
lunskra's user avatar
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Preventing secretly mined chains

In order to prevent attackers from secretly mining chains (which they could later publish to perform double-spending attacks), would it be possible to require some information to be included in the ...
JohnBig's user avatar
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1 answer
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How does a node send a chain?

I understand that in selfish mining a malicious node can "send its entire hidden chain". Exactly how is this done? I know that usually a single block is broadcast-ed right after it is mined, ...
Azurite's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
133 views

How to prevent selfish mining?

I'm exploring the topic of selfish mining attacks and how to detect and stop them. I do not really understand any of given solutions. Can someone please explain in plain English, how selfish mining ...
ddavi031's user avatar
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1 answer
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Rewriting the blockchain?

The main bitcoin blockchain (the chain that miners choose to work on) is the chain with the most proof of work ("heaviest" chain). Currently, the cumulative proof of work on the bitcoin main ...
Anonymous's user avatar
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1 answer
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Incentives against selfish miners with 51% power

To me the situation of a '51% miner' is much like a government printing money - when they do, they get to finance their budget deficits as they get to spend the money first (when prices haven't ...
ABCBAA's user avatar
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1 answer
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How Lightning Networks protect itself from 'Selfish Mining'?

It is a well accepted fact that mining pools do engage in 'selfish mining' by not broadcasting a block to the network when they find a PoW solution, but building on top of that block so as to maximize ...
Ugam Kamat's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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Why isn't the block hash used to calculate accumulated work?

Why is this idea flawed? It doesn't seem to be a bad idea at first, because the miners should be incentivized to extend existing chain, instead of to "remine existing blocks", since such "remining" ...
Chris Chen's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Possibility of broadcasting new block to only a fraction of honest nodes?

Consider in a block-withholding attack (aka selfish mining attack), attacker after creating a new block decides to broadcast this new block only to a fraction of network, such that eventually only a ...
Questioner's user avatar
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1 answer
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What exactly is selfish mining?

What is a selfish mining attack MonaCoin suffered from?
sflow's user avatar
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1 answer
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what is forking attack? and different between forking attack and selfish mining?

I am a student who studies block-chain for these days. I have a question about forking attack and selfish mining in mining strategies as you see picture below I don't understand why miner should ...
grenier's user avatar
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1 answer
224 views

Does the Longest Chain Always Win the Mining Award?

If the longest chain (i.e, the one that's the most difficult to produce or the most transactions) is always awarded with 12.5 coins (or whatever the current prize is), what happens if a specific node ...
David Lynch's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
944 views

Why is attacker revenue in the selfish mining disproportional to its hash-power?

It's not clear to me why attacker can gain more revenue if it does "selfish mining" attack than its revenue when it behaves honestly. I'm aware of this paper.
user153465's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
301 views

Is selfish mining still an option with compact blocks and FIBRE?

The selfish mining strategy relies on withholding a block to build on it in private. When the honest chain publishes a block, the attacker immediately broadcasts its own withheld block in order to try ...
Murch's user avatar
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1 answer
277 views

Can Bitcoin Days Destroyed be a better resolution mechanism for competing blocks?

I've been looking at selfish mining and empty blocks. In all cases, the selfish miner profits by keeping block solutions private until their value to his own pool is maximized, rather than releasing ...
Dave Scotese's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
642 views

Selfish Mining: stale or orphan?

In terms of a selfish attack many sources speak of orphaned blocks, i.e. blocks that are not on the main chain and thus not paying any coinbase transaction to its miner. Still I'm not sure and ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
865 views

Have bitcoin developers applied the solution for selfish miner attack?

The Majority is not enough paper proposed an academic and somehow practical attack to Bitcoin mining system based on creating hidden forks. The paper claims that if miners work on whichever fork they ...
Tail of Godzilla's user avatar
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1 answer
215 views

How to access peer's tip of chain?

In case I'm a selfish miner and have successfully forked the blockchain, I'd like to know the state of progress of my honest nodes at any given time - how can I achieve this? Do peers on separate ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
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0 answers
111 views

Leakage of information about selfish mining - what message is responsible?

A few weeks back I had asked a question about how honest nodes could detect a Selfish Mine Attack and if there were mechanisms that would disclose selfish mining. In a very first step: I've slightly ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
214 views

How to fork blockchain intentionally without RPC commands?

Are there any methods other than RPC command invalidateblock <hash> for creating forks? I know that forks occur when two miners (nearly) simultanously each generate a block for a previous common ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
124 views

Implicit/Tacit mechanisms in Bitcoin Core disclosing Selfish Mining

I'm referring to the selfish mine attack described by two researchers from Cornell University who describe a "possible" attack with lower than 51% hashing power. Now it's interesting to know what ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
125 views

Building bitcoind from modified "selfish" code - possible? how?

For a long time I've been trying to find out ways for running a "selfish mine" algorithm on bitcoind's regtest mode. Now I'm wondering if my plan is feasible, at all!? So I'll just outline my ...
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
427 views

Is it possible to use Selfish Mining to steal bitcoins?

Is it possible to use the Selfish Mining algorithm to steal bitcoins?
Aliakbar Ahmadi's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
190 views

Is it possible to identify mining pools?

I am doing research on Selfish Mining in Bitcoin. Here is the article http://hackingdistributed.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-is-broken/ I wanted to know is there a way to identify minining pools? I wanted ...
EmbarkPro's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
1k views

Does selfish mining actually give an advantage in the absence of transaction fees, difficulty changes, and economic effects?

I am reading the Cornell selfish mining paper. In it, their main argument is that a selfish miner can increase the ratio of the blocks he mines relative to the honest miners. I do not dispute this. ...
Tony's user avatar
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13 votes
2 answers
2k views

Colluding miners attack: Is the Bitcoin protocol compromised?

A very interesting academic paper has been recently published by two researches from the Cornell University (abstract, full PDF): Abstract The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions ...
Adam Matan's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
836 views

Why should a miner choose the longest blockchain if another chain has a higher expected reward?

Why did miners/pools choose the longest chain for continuing it? Because with this strategy they have the highest expected bitcoin reward. The expected bitcoin reward is (new generated bitcoin (b) + ...
user599464's user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
336 views

String-along, is this possible and is it an attack?

I haven't seen this discussed before, if it has been please provide a link. If I find a block while mining but then discover that another miner broadcast a block mere moments ago, I could begin ...
Mocky's user avatar
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