Abstract
In Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies, fair reward distribution within mining pools has become a popular area of research. Aside from a theoretical grounding, mining pool reward scheme research has commonly involved discrete event simulations of deterministic miner behaviour under different reward schemes. However, until now researchers have been left with the tedious task of developing their own mining pool simulation software, a rather time-consuming and potentially extensive undertaking, as miner behaviour becomes more complex. We present PoolSim, an open-source and very extensible discrete event simulation framework for modelling different behaviours of miners under any reward distribution scheme. By utilising this framework for different hypothetical mining scenarios, we showcase that mining pool reward scheme analysis indeed remains an exciting area for future research. Further, we believe that PoolSim will vastly increase productivity of researchers focusing on mining pools.
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Notes
- 1.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalisation. Source: https://coinmarketcap.com. Accessed: 2019-03-06.
- 2.
1 MH/s = \(10^6\) hashes per second.
- 3.
1 GH/s = \(10^9\) hashes per second.
- 4.
https://github.com/samwerner/PoolSim. Accessed: 2019-03-02.
- 5.
Ethpool refers to this as a predictable solo mining pool, however, we shall employ the term “queue-based pool” as introduced in [14].
- 6.
Minus the pool operator fee.
- 7.
As the performed simulations did not involve a PPS reward scheme under which an operator fee would indeed be relevant, we decided to omit this variable.
- 8.
- 9.
It should be noted that we have made small modifications to the simulation setup compared to the original work for performance gains.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Paul Pritz for helpful feedback. This research is supported by funding from the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis.
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Werner, S.M., Perez, D. (2020). PoolSim: A Discrete-Event Mining Pool Simulation Framework. In: Pardalos, P., Kotsireas, I., Guo, Y., Knottenbelt, W. (eds) Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37110-4_12
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