Strategic Miner Selection for Optimizing Block Generation Time in PoW-Based Blockchain Pool Mining Using SMNST Framework

In blockchain technology, mining refers to the process of validating new transactions and adding them to a permanent public ledger called distributed ledger technology (DLT). While solo mining becomes challenging for individual miners due to limitations of solo miner's hash rate and reward consistency, miners typically opt to join mining pools to combine resources and increase reward consistency. Mining pools have significantly impacted the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus, which relies heavily on decentralized mining pools to secure and validate transactions on a blockchain network. It necessitates miners to solve complex mathematical puzzles to add new blocks to the blockchain. However, it is imperative to address the potential drawbacks of PoW consensus. Establishing trust among miners in PoW mining pools is challenging due to the inherent risks associated with the decentralized nature of Blockchain. In this study, a decision management system is developed by leveraging the characteristics of Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), termed Strategic Miner Selection with TOPSIS (SMNST). Firstly, this SMNST evaluates the miner's ranks based on the decision criteria of the dynamic blockchain network. Secondly, the choice of block generation is further optimized through ranked miners only to reach an ideal solution in the pool consensus. Simulation results were demonstrated using Bitcoin Testnet3, and the effectiveness of miners in mitigating risks in PoW mining pools was analyzed through hash rate, latency, pool up-time, and block propagation time metrics.