Paper 2020/1367 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2020/1367 ↗
Costs of an Attack Against Proof-of-Work
Abstract
Bitcoin is a blockchain whose immutability relies on Proof-of-Work: Before appending a new block, some so-called miner has to solve a cryptographic challenge by brute force. The blockchain is spread over a network of faithful miners, whose cumulated computing power is assumed to be so large that, among other things, it should be too expensive for an attacker to mine a secret fork $n$ blocks longer than the main blockchain, provided that $n$ is big enough. For a given targeted advance of $n$ blocks, we investigate the expected time for the attacker to mine such a secret fork, the underlying cumulative distribution function, and some related optimization problems.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
PDF- Category
- Cryptographic protocols
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- History
- 2020-11-02: last updated
- 2020-11-02: published
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2020/1367
- License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2020/1367,
author = {Loïc Etienne},
title = {Costs of an Attack Against Proof-of-Work},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2020/1367},
year = {2020},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1367}
}