[bitcoin-dev] Selfish Mining Prevention

[Andrew <onelineproof@gmail.com>]

As I understand, selfish mining is an attack where miners collude to
mine at a lower hashrate then with all miners working independently.
What are the current strategies used to prevent this and what are the
future plans?

One idea I have is to let the block reward get "modulated" according
to peak hashrate. Say p is the peak hashrate for 365 periods (1 year)
consisting of 144 blocks, h is the hashrate of the last 144 block (1
day) period, and r is the base subsidy (12.5 BTC currently). You can
then make the max block reward 0.5 r (1 + h/p). So if hashrate is at
peak you get the full reward. Otherwise you get less, down to a min of
0.5 r.

If miners were to collude to mine at a lower than peak hashrate, then
they may be able to do it profitably for 144 blocks, but after that,
the reward would get modulated and it wouldn't be so much in their
interest to continue mining at the lower hashrate.

What flaws are there with this? I know it could be controversial due
to easier mining present for early miners, so maybe it would have to
be done in combination with a new more dynamic difficulty adjustment
algorithm. But I don't see how hashrate can continue rising
indefinitely, so a solution should be made for selfish mining.

Also when subsidies stop and a fee market is needed, I guess a portion
of the fees can be withheld for later if hashrate is not at peak.


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