A game theoretic analysis of resource mining in blockchain

Rajani Singh, Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi, Gautam Srivastava, Agnieszka Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel*, Xiaochun Cheng

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are a hot topic in today’s digital world. In this paper, we create a game theoretic model in continuous time. We consider a dynamic game model of the bitcoin market, where miners or players use mining systems to mine bitcoin by investing electricity into the mining system. Although this work is motivated by BTC, the work presented can be applicable to other mining systems similar to BTC. We propose three concepts of dynamic game theoretic solutions to the model: Social optimum, Nash equilibrium and myopic Nash equilibrium. Using the model that a player represents a single “miner” or a “mining pool”, we develop novel and interesting results for the cryptocurrency world.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCluster Computing
Volume23
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)2035-2046
Number of pages12
ISSN1386-7857
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
First and second authors were funded by University of Waterloo, Canada. The research of fourth author was financed by grant 2016/21/B/HS4/00695 of National Science Centre, Poland.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Bitcoin mining
  • Blockchain
  • Differential game
  • Dynamic game theory
  • Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation
  • Myopic Nash equilibrium
  • Nash equilibrium
  • Pigovian tax
  • Social optimum

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