Mitigation of block withholding attack based on zero-determinant strategy

• Published in: PeerJ. Computer science Vol. 8; p. e997
• Main Authors: Ren, Min, Guo, Hongfeng, Wang, Zhihao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego PeerJ. Ltd 21.07.2022; PeerJ, Inc; PeerJ Inc
• Subjects: Algorithms; Block withholding attack; Blockchain; Cooperation; Digital currencies; Equilibrium; Game theory; Mining dilemma; Pools; Revenue; Scientific Computing and Simulation; Security and Privacy; Strategy; Theory and Formal Methods; Zero-determinant
• ISSN: 2376-5992; 2376-5992
• DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.997

This article focuses on the mining dilemma of block withholding attack between the mining pools in the bitcoin system. In order to obtain the higher revenue, the rational mining pool usually chooses an infiltration attack, that is, the pool will falls into the mining dilemma of the PoW consensus algorithm. Thus the article proposes to apply zero-determinant strategies for optimizing the behavior selection of the mining pool under PoW consensus mechanism to increase the total revenues of the system, so as to solve the mining dilemma. After theoretically studying the set and extortionate strategy of zero-determinant, the article devises an adaptive zero-determinant strategy that the pool can change the corporation probability of the next round based on its previous revenues. To verify the effectiveness of zero-determinant strategies, based on the actual revenue of the mining pool defined and deduced in the paper, it simulates 30 sets of game strategies to illustrate the revenue variation of the mining pools. The simulation results show that the three zero-determinant strategies can effectively improve the convergence rate of cooperation, mitigate block withholding attack and maximize the total revenues of the system. Compared with the set and extortionate strategy, the adaptive strategy can ensure more stability and more revenue.