SDoS: Selfish Mining-Based Denial-of-Service Attack

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on mining attacks targeting the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism in blockchain-based systems. Specifically, we model mining as a game and propose a mining attack – the Selfish mining-based denial of service (SDoS) attack. By studying the choices (mining or stopping) of honest miners under the attack and the adversary’s revenue, we demonstrate that selfish mining is incentive-compatible with game-level denial of service attack, and that SDoS can be more threatening than existing mining attacks. Even under the worst assumption, the adversary only needs to master more than 19.6% of the total mining power to increase the revenue, and can launch a 51% attack with much less than 50%. In addition, we show that honest miners may make decisions based on the overall or current utility, and choosing the current utility is more beneficial to the adversary.