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Squeezing Network Performance for Secure and Efficient PoW with Better Difficulty Adjustment

  • Yuhang Ding
  • , Zihan Yang
  • , Bo Qin*
  • , Qin Wang
  • , Yanran Zhang
  • , Qianhong Wu
  • *Corresponding author for this work
  • Renmin University of China
  • CSIRO

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) is critical for PoW blockchain systems in currency issuance, transaction throughput, and blockchain security. Most DAAs concentrate on the unique goal of block-making stability from seconds to minutes. In contrast, we propose a new DAA with the goal of stabilizing orphan rates among the blocks made recently, observing that the orphan rate is more indicative since too high orphan rate indicates poor blockchain security and waste of honest hash power whereas too low orphan rate indicates poor blockchain throughout and wast of time awaiting other blocks. We notice a security defect of the recent orphan-rate DAA (NDSS 2022) in which an attacker may continually create orphan blocks and mislead miners to wrongly increase the difficulty. To fix this defect, our enhanced DAA takes into the orphan rate variation during the historical slots with smooth exponential decay affection on current difficulty adjustment. Theoretical and experimental analyses show that our DAA is effective and secure.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2022 IEEE 21st International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2022
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages874-881
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781665494250
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Event21st IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2022 - Virtual, Online, China
Duration: 9 Dec 202211 Dec 2022

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2022 IEEE 21st International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2022

Conference

Conference21st IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2022
Country/TerritoryChina
CityVirtual, Online
Period9/12/2211/12/22

Keywords

  • Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm
  • Proof of Work

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