Visual analytics of bitcoin mining pool evolution: on the road toward stability?

Natkamon Tovanich (), Nicolas Soulié and Petra Isenberg ()
Additional contact information
Natkamon Tovanich: IRT SystemX, AVIZ - Analysis and Visualization - LISN - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - IaH - Interaction avec l'Humain - LISN - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Centre Inria de l'Université Paris-Saclay - Centre Inria de Saclay - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
Petra Isenberg: AVIZ - Analysis and Visualization - LISN - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - IaH - Interaction avec l'Humain - LISN - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Centre Inria de l'Université Paris-Saclay - Centre Inria de Saclay - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We present our work on visual analytics tools to support the analysis of Bitcoin mining pool evolution. Mining blocks are a critical component of the Bitcoin ecosystem, helping to keep the system secure, valid, and stable. At the same time, mining is a resource-intensive activity that continues to get more and more difficult. Mining pools have emerged to address this issue and to ensure a more stable and predictable income by sharing computing power. Yet, increased centralization of the mining power is also not without dangers (e. g., the 51% attack), and, thus, it is important to better understand and analyze mining pool activities in Bitcoin. Here, we report three contributions: our extensive data collection on Bitcoin mining pools, our development of two custom visualizations, and our first exploratory data analysis leading to hypotheses and documented activities about pools' main features such as market share, reward rules, or location.

Keywords: Bitcoin; Mining pools; Visual analytics; Index Terms-Bitcoin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02902465v2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in BSC 2020-2021 - 3rd International Workshop on Blockchains and Smart Contracts held in conjunction with the 11th IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security, Apr 2021, Paris, France. ⟨10.1109/NTMS49979.2021.9432675⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02902465v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02902465

DOI: 10.1109/NTMS49979.2021.9432675

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().