Prevention of Selfish Mining Attacks in Blockchain-Enabled Smart City Networks

The paper presents a method for protecting a blockchain against selfish mining attacks. The mining algorithm in blockchains with the Proof-of-Work consensus has been investigated. Related works in the area of detecting selfish mining attacks are reviewed. A selfish miner has an advantage in profitability with a hash rate of more than 25% of the network capacity. Detection of selfish mining attacks is based on analyzing the behavior of a mining pool. Stratum V2 protocol message fields are identified that allow detecting a selfish mining attack from a mining pool. A selfish mining detection plug-in has been developed for the miner's software, allowing one to analyze data patterns coming from a mining pool. As experiments show, the proposed approach outperforms other selfish mining detectors, as it identifies the attacking pool and has lower error rates. The developed solution can be integrated with the miner's software to reduce the negative effects of selfish mining attacks on critical infrastructures such as blockchain-enabled smart cities.