Publication detail

Mitigating Undercutting Attacks: Fee-Redistribution Smart Contracts for Transaction-Fee-Based Regime of Blockchains with the Longest Chain Rule

BUDINSKÝ, R. STANČÍKOVÁ, I. HOMOLIAK, I.

Original Title

Mitigating Undercutting Attacks: Fee-Redistribution Smart Contracts for Transaction-Fee-Based Regime of Blockchains with the Longest Chain Rule

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

In this paper, we review the undercutting attacks in the transaction-fee-based regime (i.e., without block rewards) of proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains with the longest chain fork-choice rule. Next, we focus on the two related problems: (1) fluctuations in mining revenue and (2) the mining gap - i.e., a situation, in which the immediate reward from transaction fees does not cover miners' expenditures. To mitigate these issues, we propose a solution that splits transaction fees from a mined block into two parts-(1) an instant reward for the miner of a block and (2) a deposit sent to one or more fee-redistribution smart contracts (FRSCs) that are part of the consensus protocol. At the same time, these FRSCs reward the miner of a block with a certain fraction of the accumulated funds over a predefined time. This setting enables us to achieve several interesting properties that improve the incentive stability and security of the protocol, which is beneficial for the honest miners. With our solution, the fraction of DEFAULT-COMPLIANT miners who strictly do not execute undercutting attacks is lowered from the state-of-the-art result of 66% to 30%.

Keywords

   - undercutting attacks,    - transaction-fee-based regime,    - blockchains,    - mining gap,    - fluctuations in mining revenue

Authors

BUDINSKÝ, R.; STANČÍKOVÁ, I.; HOMOLIAK, I.

Released

30. 1. 2024

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Location

Danzhou, China

ISBN

979-8-3503-1929-3

Book

2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain)

Pages from

25

Pages to

32

Pages count

8

URL

https://xplorestaging.ieee.org/document/10411479

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT185121,
  author="Rastislav {Budinský} and Ivana {Stančíková} and Ivan {Homoliak}",
  title="Mitigating Undercutting Attacks: Fee-Redistribution Smart Contracts for Transaction-Fee-Based Regime of Blockchains with the Longest Chain Rule",
  booktitle="2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain)",
  year="2024",
  pages="25--32",
  publisher="Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
  address="Danzhou, China",
  doi="10.1109/Blockchain60715.2023.00014",
  isbn="979-8-3503-1929-3",
  url="https://xplorestaging.ieee.org/document/10411479"
}