The Bitcoin Mining Game

Authors

  • Nicolas Houy CNRS - GATE-LSE

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/ledger.2016.13

Keywords:

Bitcoin, Mining, Game theory

Abstract

This article deals with the mining incentives in the Bitcoin protocol. The mining process is used to confirm and secure transactions. This process is organized as a speed game between individuals or firms – the miners – with different computational powers to solve a mathematical problem, bring a proof of work, spread their solution and reach consensus among the Bitcoin network nodes with it. First, we define and specify this game. Second, we analytically find its Nash equilibria in the two-player case. We analyze the parameters for which the miners would face the proper incentives to fulfill their function of transaction processors in the current situation. Finally, we study the block space market offer. 

References

Andresen G. (2013) “Back-of-the-envelope calculations for marginal cost of transactions,”

https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/5044482. Accessed 3 March 2014.

Courtois N.T. and Bahack L. (2014) "On subversive miner strategies and block withholding attack in Bitcoin digital currency," arXiv: 1402.1718.

Decker C. and Wattenhofer R. (2013) "Information propagation in the Bitcoin network," 13th IEEE Interna- tional Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P), Trento, Italy, September 2013.

Eyal I. and Sirer E.G. (2013) "Majority is not enough: Bitcoin mining is vulnerable," arXiv: 1311.0243.

Eyal I. (2014) "The miner’s dilemma," arXiv: 1411.7099.

Houy N. (2014) "It will cost you nothing to ’kill’ a proof-of-stake crypto-currency," Economics Bulletin, 34(2): 1038-1044.

Houy N. (2014) "The economics of Bitcoin transaction fees", Working paper GATE 2014-07.

Kroll J.A., Davey I.C. and Felten E.W. (2013) "The economics of Bitcoin mining, or Bitcoin in the presence of adversaries," Mimeo.

Lewenberg A., Bachrach Y., Sompolinsky Y., Zohar A. and Rosenschein J.S. (2015) "Bitcoin mining pools: A cooperative game theoretic analysis," Proceeding AAMAS ’15 Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: 919-927.

Nakamoto S. (2009) "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system."

Rizun P.R. (2015) "A transaction fee market exists without a block size limit."

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43331625/feemarket.pdf.

Sapirshtein A., Sompolinsky Y. and Zohar A. (2015) "Optimal selfish mining strategies in Bitcoin," arXiv: 1507.06183.

Stone A. (2015) "An examination of single transaction blocks and their effect on network throughput and block size." http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/1txn/

https://tradeblock.com/blog/bitcoin-network-capacity-analysis-part-6-data-propagation. Accessed 20 December 2015.

Ledger: The Inaugural Issue

Downloads

Published

2016-12-21

How to Cite

Houy, N. (2016). The Bitcoin Mining Game. Ledger, 1, 53–68. https://doi.org/10.5195/ledger.2016.13

Issue

Vol. 1 (2016)

Section

Research Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
  9. The Author agrees to digitally sign the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.