Mining competition in a multi-cryptocurrency ecosystem at the network edge: A congestion game approach

Eitan Altman (1, 2, 3) , Alexandre Reiffers-Masson (4) , Daniel Sadoc Menasché (5) , Mandar Datar (1, 3) , Swapnil Dhamal (1, 3) , Corinne Touati (6)

1 NEO - Network Engineering and Operations
2 LINCS - Laboratory of Information, Network and Communication Sciences
3 LIA - Laboratoire Informatique d'Avignon
4 IISc Bangalore - Indian Institute of Science [Bangalore]
5 IM / UFRJ - Instituto de Matemática da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
6 Inria Grenoble - Rhône-Alpes

We model the competition over several blockchains characterizing multiple cryptocurrencies as a non-cooperative game. Then, we specialize our results to two instances of the general game, showing properties of the Nash equilibrium. In particular, leveraging results about congestion games, we establish the existence of pure Nash equilibria and provide efficient algorithms for finding such equilibria.

Mots clés: Blockchain; Network performance; Game theory; Cryptocurrency; Bitcoin

Domaines: Informatique et théorie des jeux [cs.GT]

Eitan Altman, Alexandre Reiffers-Masson, Daniel Sadoc Menasché, Mandar Datar, Swapnil Dhamal, et al.. Mining competition in a multi-cryptocurrency ecosystem at the network edge: A congestion game approach. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, 2019, 46 (3), pp.114-117. ⟨10.1145/3308897.3308950⟩. ⟨hal-01906954⟩