Evolutionary game for mining pool selection in blockchain networks

Xiaojun Liu; Wenbo Wang; Dusit Niyato; Narisa Zhao; Ping Wang

doi:10.1109/lwc.2018.2820009

Evolutionary game for mining pool selection in blockchain networks

Xiaojun Liu, Wenbo Wang, Dusit Niyato, Narisa Zhao, Ping Wang

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

141 Scopus citations

Abstract

In proof-of-work-based blockchain networks, the block miners participate in a crypto-puzzle solving competition to win the reward of publishing (i.e., mining) new blocks. Due to the remarkable difficulty of the crypto-puzzle, individual miners tend to join mining pools to secure stable profits. We study the dynamics of mining pool selection in a blockchain network, where mining pools may choose arbitrary block mining strategies. We identify the hash rate for puzzle-solving and the block propagation delay as two major factors determining the mining competition results. We then model the strategy evolution of individual miners as an evolutionary game. We provide the theoretical analysis of evolutionary stability in the pool selection dynamics for a two-pool case. Numerical simulations support our theoretical findings as well as demonstrate the stability in the evolution of miners' strategies in a general case.

Original language	English
Article number	8326513
Pages (from-to)	760-763
Number of pages	4
Journal	IEEE Wireless Communications Letters
Volume	7
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/lwc.2018.2820009
State	Published - Oct 2018
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2012 IEEE.

Funding

Singapore MOE Tier 1 under Grant 2017-T1-002-007 RG122/17. Manuscript received January 8, 2018; revised March 5, 2018; accepted March 22, 2018. Date of publication March 27, 2018; date of current version October 11, 2018. This work was supported in part by the Singapore MOE Tier 1 under Grant 2017-T1-002-007 RG122/17, and in part by the Singapore MOE Tier 2 under Grant MOE2014-T2-2-015 ARC4/15 and Grant NRF2015-NRF-ISF001-2277. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was M. Dong. (Corresponding author: Xiaojun Liu.) X. Liu and N. Zhao are with the Institute of Systems Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]).

Funders	Funder number
Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China	2017-T1-002-007 RG122/17

Keywords

Blockchain
evolutionary game
mining pool

Access to Document

10.1109/lwc.2018.2820009

Cite this

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title = "Evolutionary game for mining pool selection in blockchain networks",

abstract = "In proof-of-work-based blockchain networks, the block miners participate in a crypto-puzzle solving competition to win the reward of publishing (i.e., mining) new blocks. Due to the remarkable difficulty of the crypto-puzzle, individual miners tend to join mining pools to secure stable profits. We study the dynamics of mining pool selection in a blockchain network, where mining pools may choose arbitrary block mining strategies. We identify the hash rate for puzzle-solving and the block propagation delay as two major factors determining the mining competition results. We then model the strategy evolution of individual miners as an evolutionary game. We provide the theoretical analysis of evolutionary stability in the pool selection dynamics for a two-pool case. Numerical simulations support our theoretical findings as well as demonstrate the stability in the evolution of miners' strategies in a general case.",

keywords = "Blockchain, evolutionary game, mining pool",

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Evolutionary game for mining pool selection in blockchain networks

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