An empirical analysis of chain reorganizations and double-spend attacks on proof-of-work cryptocurrencies
Name
1193019932-MIT.pdf
Size
2.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5ba139b8f73419240842a9d160d76c8e
Author(s)
Lovejoy, James Peter Thomas.
Advisor(s)
Neha Narula.
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Nakamoto consensus has powered Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry over the past 10 years, but its security properties when an adversary's economic incentives are taken into account remain poorly understood. Recently, reports of successful real-world attacks against some coins have served as a wake-up call for the industry to review each coins' consensus risk. This research contributes a new system for detecting transaction reordering events against live cryptocurrencies. We deployed the system on a spectrum of different cryptocurrencies and combined our results with historical market data to analyze how the properties of each coin affect its consensus risk and evaluate the effectiveness of existing theoretical models for quantifying the cost of attack. We also describe some of the significant attacks we detected, providing empirical evidence that launching an attack can be practical, and that counterattacking may be a viable strategy for victims to defend themselves from an economically rational adversary.
Description
Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, May, 2020
Cataloged from the official PDF of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 96-101).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
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