The impact of propagation delay to different selfish miners in proof-of-work blockchains

Abstract

Selfish mining is an attack on the integrity of a blockchain network. Inspired by J. Gobel’s selfish mining model in the presence of propagation delay, we propose a competition model based on spatial Poisson process to study how delay influences the revenue distribution when there are more than one selfish miners. Based on our model, we derive the exact expression of the revenue distribution, and prove that the difference of propagation delays between two selfish miners significantly affects the distribution of mining rewards. Additionally, we find that the required threshold of the mining power for multiple selfish miners is larger than that for a single one. Finally, we discuss how the propagation delay impacts the state transfer machine of each selfish miner.