Pooling Under the Sun: A Mining Pool Centralized Revisit and Solution

Mining pools are fundamental infrastructure in most public blockchain networks that utilize Proof-of-Work consensus, ensuring that miners receive stable rewards and contribute to the computational power and storage of the network. However, mining pools also introduce centralization to the network, which increases the risk of security issues such as bribe attacks and censorship. To address the issue, this paper proposes a decentralized mining pool schema SSMP. Firstly, we distinguish between two aspects of centralization in mining pools, which are data determination, and block ownership, and suggest solutions to mitigate these issues. The proposed method utilizes anonymous broadcasting for a random leader selection schema to ensure each participating miner has an equal possibility to generate the block data. Additionally, a special threshold signature design prevents the leader miner from controlling the valid block solely of the mining pool through bribery. To validate our approach, we theoretically verify the security of the proposed method and compare it to traditional centralized mining pools. In summary, SSMP withholds the essential properties of the decentralized mining pools that maintain efficiency.