Selfish Mining is the type of crypto attack which is done by Miners themselves to increase their revenue and profitability, also it is a way to increase your dominance over the blockchain network, it occurs when a miner withholds the broadcasting of validation of a block.
A block when discovered through the mining process is transmitted among the peer-to-peer network, If the block is extending the other miner’s blockchain network then the block is transferred back to its original mining network.
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Now the Bitcoin Protocol
Bitcoin protocol works on the safe and secure transaction of the cryptocurrency, some of the conditions which help in working of the network are as follow:
- Block mining means discovering the new block, validating its transaction details and placing it in the first place of the blockchain network.
- What is forking? Forking of blocks means the announcement of two similar blocks at the same time, which are linked with the parent block.
- However, according to the protocol no two blocks can be admitted to the miners, only the block received first is accepted and miners can’t resend the second block.
- So, the coinciding of two same blocks at the time of broadcasting is called Forking, which divides the entire blockchain into two halves.
- And the blockchain series is continued until a new block is discovered by the miner and he has succeeded in extending the previous blockchain than the later one or vice-versa.
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History of Selfish Mining
Selfish mining was discovered for the first time in 2010 when it proposed the idea of hiding the details of transactions for some time and then publishing it.
However, some people have observed that this Selfish mining, if executed successfully, can dominate the whole blockchain network by securing 33 percent of total mining power.
Disadvantages Selfish Mining
Selfish mining is extremely harmful to the transparency of bitcoin transactions because it aims at dominating the entire blockchain by raising the percentage of mining power, here are some potential harms of selfish mining:
- 51 % Mining attack
Some miners saw this as the future opportunity to increase their profitability by hiding the details and later on broadcasting it on the peak time, this scheme easily convinced the miners to drift toward the illegal way of mining.
Therefore, it raises the situation which has the potential to dominate more than fifty percent of total Mining cartel resources.
- Increased Number of Transaction
Selfish mining casts a negative effect on the transaction period, it polarizes the transaction system where half of the transactions are still undercover while the unnecessary transaction period is increased due to this misleading situation.
- Increased Number of Block races
Due to the misleading situation of the transaction period, many transactions which were rejected during a block race would take time to reappear in another block race session to get verified and it would increase the number of blocks of races.
- Forging the Timestamps
Selfish miner chooses to delay the timestamps for the honest miner by forging the timestamps for the validation and broadcasting of a mined block, which helps them to maximize their winning chances against the honest miner.
Ways to stop Selfish Mining
- Adding timestamps to Blocks
One can add the timestamps on the blocks that would make it easy to spot the period of transaction and can save the fellow miners from the time-wasting session.
- Using Unforged Timestamps
Adding random sizes of beacons together creates an unforgeable timestamp that can’t be forged and all the details of mining time can be easily broadcasted in public.
- Confirmation of Height of Block
We can have a built-in height confirmation technique that must be based on such an algorithm that can easily predict the time taken in backlogs of transactions.
The fee priority of transactions within the three hours of the last transaction, and saving the rate of transactions that are fed in software in the form of input.
Conclusion
Selfish mining can be very dangerous to the decentralized system of online cash transactions; therefore, it is the duty of miners or mining members to strengthen and solidify their system of transactions with an impenetrable algorithm. To learn more visit https://bitcoinscompass.com/.
