Fehnker, Ansgar and Chaudhary, Kaylash C. (2018) Twenty Percent and a Few Days–Optimising a Bitcoin Majority Attack. In: NASA Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Springer, Switzerland, pp. 157-163. ISBN 978-3-319-77934-8
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Bitcoin is a distributed online payment system that organises transactions into blocks. The
size of blocks is limited to 1 megabyte, which also limits the number of transactions per
second that can be confirmed. This year several attempts have been made to create a fork or
a split that removes this restriction. One such alternative is Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU).
Proponents of BTU have suggested to use a type of majority attack to force other Bitcoin
miners to adopt BTU. In this paper we model this attack in Uppaal, and analyse how long it
will take for an attack to succeed, depending on the share the attacker has of the total
network, and the so-called confirmation depth. The analysis shows that with a share of 20%
an attack will be successful within a few days. This paper also looks at the effect of
increasing the confirmation depth as a countermeasure.
| Item Type: | Book Chapter |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77935-5 |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment (FSTE) > School of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Kaylash Chaudhary |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jun 2018 00:57 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2018 00:57 |
| URI: | https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/10795 |
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