The Impact of Selfish Mining on Bitcoin Network Performance

Abstract

Selfish mining strategy allows miners to gain unfair advantage and excess revenue in Bitcoin network, but it also disrupts the normal operation of the network. In this work, we analyze the impact of selfish behavior on the Bitcoin network through a number of performance indicators such as network connectivity, block arrival rate, node response time, and block delivery time for selfish and honest blocks, respectively. We also discuss the probability of unintentional as well as intentional forks. We have found that the impact of selfish mining on network performance is noticeable, and in extreme cases, disproportional to the number of selfish miners or their hash power compared to honest nodes. Our analysis has also found that forking probability is dominated by intentional forking resulting from selfish behavior, which has the potential to increase the ledger inconsistency time and open the door to security attacks.