Memory Pool Publisher Algorithm for Preventing Malicious Fork in the Bitcoin Environment
Ahmed H. Madkour, Hatem Abdelkader, Asmaa Ali
Abstract
Open-access reader
Ahmed H. Madkour, Hatem Abdelkader, Asmaa Ali
Abstract
Open-access reader
— Blockchain technology is used by most Bitcoin systems to store all historical transaction information. Blockchain is a chain of blocks similar to the linked list structure and can be changed to a fork structure, in which there are two types of forks: useful fork or an intentional fork structure. A useful fork may appear when the rules of the Bitcoin system are updated. On the other hand, the intentional fork may appear when a miner has supercomputer properties, generates a set of blocks as a private branch, and does not publish this branch to the blockchain until its length exceeds the length of the main branch. A set of blockchain transactions will be rollbacked when the intentional fork occurs in the Bitcoin system, user waiting times will increase, and miner rewards will illegally increase. A Memory pool publisher algorithm is suggested in this paper to avoid the fork issues in the Bitcoin system, for instance: intentional fork, rollback problem, users waiting time. The proposed algorithm is to make the system a single publisher and divide the block's construction into two phases. A miner constructs a block and sends it to the memory pool as the first phase. The memory pool will send the construction block to the blockchain as the second phase. The findings indicate that the proposed algorithm has a strong potential to avoid the blockchain's intentional fork problem and thus minimize user waiting times for the rollback problem.
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— Blockchain technology is used by most Bitcoin systems to store all historical transaction information. Blockchain is a chain of blocks similar to the linked list structure and can be changed to a fork structure, in which there are two types of forks: useful fork or an intentional fork structure. A useful fork may appear when the rules of the Bitcoin system are updated. On the other hand, the intentional fork may appear when a miner has supercomputer properties, generates a set of blocks as a private branch, and does not publish this branch to the blockchain until its length exceeds the length of the main branch. A set of blockchain transactions will be rollbacked when the intentional fork occurs in the Bitcoin system, user waiting times will increase, and miner rewards will illegally increase. A Memory pool publisher algorithm is suggested in this paper to avoid the fork issues in the Bitcoin system, for instance: intentional fork, rollback problem, users waiting time. The proposed algorithm is to make the system a single publisher and divide the block's construction into two phases. A miner constructs a block and sends it to the memory pool as the first phase. The memory pool will send the construction block to the blockchain as the second phase. The findings indicate that the proposed algorithm has a strong potential to avoid the blockchain's intentional fork problem and thus minimize user waiting times for the rollback problem.
Key concepts: Fork (system call), Computer science, Block (permutation group theory), Database transaction, Set (abstract data type), Blockchain, Operating system, Parallel computing