Selfish Mining
Security● Common
A mining strategy where a miner withholds found blocks to gain advantage over honest miners. By selectively releasing blocks, the attacker can orphan competitors' blocks and claim more than their fair share of rewards. Requires significant hashrate to be profitable.
Technical Notes
Threshold: ~25-33% hashrate to be profitable (varies with network connectivity). Attack: mine secretly, release to orphan honest blocks when needed. Mitigations: better block propagation, FIBRE network, shorter block intervals (trade-offs). Rarely observed in practice.
Metadata
Visibility: Public
Created:1/3/2026by System