Has anyone actually read the study? It seems like a legitimate problem from a cursory glance. Bitcoin miners should take steps to prevent selfish mining.
As the paper points out, what we thought was a 51% attack looks to be a 26% attack.
Topic: Major flaw of Bitcoin found - page 2. (Read 4508 times)
So this is really nothing new... ok.
Panic seeds! Never trust a person named Eyal.
What's with Eyal?
Panic button! (:sarcasm:)
Panic seeds! Never trust a person named Eyal.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131104112234.htm
But post-doctoral fellow Ittay Eyal and Prof. Emin Gün Sirer have discovered that the conventional wisdom is wrong. In a paper that was released on ArXiv today, they describe a mining strategy they call Selfish-Mine, which allows a group of colluding miners, known as a mining pool, to earn more than its fair share of compensation. Moreover, large mining pools can use this strategy to increase their revenue even more, at the expense of honest miners.
The implications of this result are devastating for the system, say Eyal and Sirer. Once a selfish mining pool forms, other miners will want to join that pool to increase their revenue. This process could lead to a takeover, where the selfish miners become a majority, control the global Bitcoin ledger, and the decentralized nature of the currency collapses.
But post-doctoral fellow Ittay Eyal and Prof. Emin Gün Sirer have discovered that the conventional wisdom is wrong. In a paper that was released on ArXiv today, they describe a mining strategy they call Selfish-Mine, which allows a group of colluding miners, known as a mining pool, to earn more than its fair share of compensation. Moreover, large mining pools can use this strategy to increase their revenue even more, at the expense of honest miners.
The implications of this result are devastating for the system, say Eyal and Sirer. Once a selfish mining pool forms, other miners will want to join that pool to increase their revenue. This process could lead to a takeover, where the selfish miners become a majority, control the global Bitcoin ledger, and the decentralized nature of the currency collapses.
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