Multi-miner's Cooperative Evolution Method of Bitcoin Pool Based on Temporal Difference Leaning Method

Ou, Wei; Deng, Mingwei; Luo, Entao; Shi, Wei; Tan, Zhiyuan; Bhuiyan, Md

Abstract

Proof of Work (PoW) is used to provide a consensus mechanism for Bitcoin. In this mechanism, the process of generating a new block in the blockchain is referred to as mining. Such process is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and time consuming so that the rate of block generation remains steady. A single participant, called a miner usually has limited computation power to produce PoWs. This leads miners to form a mining pool, where miners aggregate their computing power and share the rewards. However, a phenomenon raises in such a mining pool activity, where miners attack each other. Consequently, this results in a decrease in total rewards received from the mining pool. To address the abovementioned problem, we build a multi-miner model for forming a mining pool. We further propose a method to improve the cooperation-probability of miners in the pool by introducing a Zero-Determinant strategy and a Temporal Difference learning method (TD(λ)). Experimental simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively promote the cooperation among miners, therefore, increase the rewards received from the formed mining pool.

Citation

Ou, W., Deng, M., Luo, E., Shi, W., Tan, Z., & Bhuiyan, M. (2019, July). Multi-miner's Cooperative Evolution Method of Bitcoin Pool Based on Temporal Difference Leaning Method. Presented at The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom-2019), Atlanta, USA

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom-2019)
• Start Date: Jul 14, 2019
• End Date: Jul 17, 2019
• Acceptance Date: May 15, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 21, 2019
• Publication Date: Oct 21, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 5, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 21, 2019
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 687-693
• Book Title: 2019 International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/iThings/GreenCom/CPSCom/SmartData.2019.00131
• Keywords: Bitcoin; Blockchain; Temporal Difference Learning Method; Zero-Determinant Strategy; Block withholding Attack
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1855505
• Contract Date: Jun 5, 2019