Selfish Mining in Multi-Attacker Scenarios: An Empirical Evaluation of Nakamoto, Fruitchain, and Strongchain

2026-01-06

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study addresses the gap in existing research, which predominantly focuses on selfish mining under a single attacker scenario, by providing a systematic security evaluation of prominent proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocols in multi-attacker environments. We propose a probabilistic model-based stochastic simulation framework to formally model and comparatively analyze the strategic behavior and profitability of Nakamoto, Fruitchain, and Strongchain under concurrent adversarial attacks. Our framework not only successfully reproduces established profitability thresholds for the single-attacker setting but also uncovers novel threshold dynamics emerging when two or more attackers coexist. Furthermore, we release an extensible open-source simulation platform to support empirical evaluation and informed design of future consensus protocols.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Adversarial Learning
• Search and Optimization: Adversarial Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies

Abstract

The aim of this work is to enhance blockchain security by deepening the understanding of selfish mining attacks in various consensus protocols, especially the ones that have the potential to mitigate selfish mining. Previous research was mainly focused on a particular protocol with a single selfish miner, while only limited studies have been conducted on two or more attackers. To address this gap, we proposed a stochastic simulation framework that enables analysis of selfish mining with multiple attackers across various consensus protocols. We created the model of Proof-of-Work (PoW) Nakamoto consensus (serving as the baseline) as well as models of two additional consensus protocols designed to mitigate selfish mining: Fruitchain and Strongchain. Using our framework, thresholds reported in the literature were verified, and several novel thresholds were discovered for 2 and more attackers. We made the source code of our framework available, enabling researchers to evaluate any newly added protocol with one or more selfish miners and cross-compare it with already modeled protocols.

Problem

• Selfish Mining
• Multi-Attacker
• Consensus Protocols
• Blockchain Security
• Nakamoto Consensus

Innovation

• selfish mining
• multi-attacker
• stochastic simulation
• consensus protocols
• blockchain security