Stubborn Mining Attack And How It Can Be Prevented On The Blockchain

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INTRODUCTION

The world of cryptocurrency and digital currency is quite prone and susceptible to a lot of attacks and the one in which I will be particularly talking about today is the one known as the Stubborn mining attack, this is basically an attack that involves a type of selfish mining.

This is an attack where the perpetrators or attackers try to selfishly take advantage of the mining process to meet their agendas they do this by manipulating the blockchain network, these attacks can undermine and destroy the integrity, trust or confidence and security of the blockchain.

In this post of mine I will be explaining and exploring some of the ways and strategies we can apply and adopt so we can ensure that this Stubborn attack does not destroy the trust and integrity of the blockchain networks and also to ensure and maintain security.

• IMPLEMENTING PENALTY MECHANISM

One effective strategy to prevent the attempts of this Stubborn mining attack is by setting consequences and penalties as well as implementing mechanisms to execute this penalty actions, this will serve as a deterrence to miners from thinking about let alone engaging in any form of attack against the network including stubborn mining attacks.

Some of this penalties or disciplinary actions against attackers can be in different forms, such as financial repercussions and in networks that implement the proof if stake consensus mechanisms we can have slashing penalties whereby, validators who engage or attempt this attack will lose a portion or all of their staked coins.

Additionally, the blockchain networks can create or develop a kind of reputation system that tracks or monitors and keeps record of miners behavior and then miners with poor reputations as a result of involving in suspicious activities will have their chances of being selected to validate blocks reduced if not totally tanked.

• IMPLEMENT ROBUST CONSENSUS MECHANISM

Another effective strategy to be used in the fight against Stubborn mining attack is to implement and adopt robust and complex consensus mechanisms, when these robust and complex mechanisms are employed they basically ensure that the integrity of the blockchain is maintained.

It does this by basically making sure that all miners and users agree on the state of the blockchain these robust consensus mechanisms take for example the proof of stake consensus can facilitate the prevention and stopping of the threat of stubborn mining attacks.

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The Proof of Stake consensus helps to prevent stubborn mining attacks by reducing the incentive for those who might be thinking of taking part in selfish mining because in the proof of stake consensus "slashing" is applicable and because validators do not want to risk loosing some if not all of their staked cryptocurrency they are sure to avoid participating in any form of attacks against the network.

• INCREASING AND MAINTAINING NETWORK DECENTRALIZATION

Another effective strategy to help prevent Stubborn mining attacks is to increase the decentralization of the blockchain network this approach can help resist this attack because, when mining power is distributed equally across many nodes, it becomes increasingly difficult for any one single miner or participant to manipulate the blockchain.

Therefore there should be reduced computational and hardware requirements, reduced staking amouts and lower participation barriers so as to encourage diverse participation in mining processes from both individual miners and lower scale mining pools so as to enhance decentralization.

Furthermore, additional incentives such as higher block rewards and bonuses could be provided for miners who are newly taking part in mining activities and are contributing to the network's decentralization so as to encourage the creation and development of a more distributed mining landscape.

• ENHANCING BLOCK PROPAGATION SPEED

Another effective approach or strategy for fighting against stubborn mining attack can be to actively increase and enhance the speed and rate at which a new block is being propagated or processed by doing this will be taking away any delays for Stubborn mining attackers to exploit.

Therefore by implementingCompact blocks which is more efficient in propagating blocks owing to the fact that it only sends block headers and transaction identifiers instead of the full block data, cryptgraphers can ensure the quick and fast processing of newly mined blocks and as a result reducing the possibility or the network's susceptibility to attacks

Additionally, relay networks can also be implemented seeing as they also facilitate swift, rapid and efficient block distribution, it does this by basically prioritizing the transmission of blocks over regular transactions, and as a result reducing propagation delays.

CONCLUSION

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To simply put like many other security threat and vulnerability that the blockchain has and is prone to, the stubborn mining attack also pose a significant hindrance to the blockchain network keeping its promise of providing and offering increased security and superior features greater than that if the traditional financial world.

However, by implementing and applying effective strategic preventive and eliminating protocols some of which I have fully explained in this post like robust consensus mechanisms, enhancing block propagation, introducing penalties and enhancing decentralization, blockchain will survive.