[Invited Lecture] Probabilistic Analysis on Mining Time in Private Blockchain Networks

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a widespread consensus algorithm to generate new blocks in blockchain networks. PoW is to calculate a mathematic puzzle, which is regulated by a difficulty value. Given the properties of the cryptographic hash function utilized in PoW, miners apply an enumerate strategy to find the answers. Therefore, the mining time follows an exponential distribution. This work implements private blockchain networks on different devices, where the difficulty value is dynamically adjusted according to the computational power. We use a probabilistic method to analyze the mining time, which reveals the variation of difficulty value during PoW algorithm execution. The mining time eventually follows similar exponential distribution on different devices.

X. Chen, K. Nguyen and H. Sekiya, "Probabilistic Analysis on Mining Time in Private Blockchain Networks," Technical Committee on Network Systems, NS, IEICE Tech. Rep. 121.185 (2021): 51-56.