Selfish Crypto-Miners are people who use the revenue of bitcoin secretly, to more precise illegally.



But before getting into the detail of it, let us first understand the process of mining the bitcoin and why is it done?



Bitcoin Mining - a new way to generate revenue!



Bitcoin mining is the procedure by which exchanges are checked and added to the public ledger or the general record, known as the blockchain, and furthermore the methods through which new bitcoin are discharged. Anybody with access to the web and appropriate equipment can take an interest in mining.



The mining procedure is inclusive of the converting recent transactions into blocks and then trying to solve a very complex problem that is in the form of the puzzle. The participant who initially solves the puzzle gets the chance to place the next block on the blockchain and gain the rewards. The prizes, which boost mining, are both the transaction expenses related to the transactions that are put together in the block and newly launched bitcoin.

You get revenue and additional rewards if you have the ability to solve a complex puzzle. But it is not at all easy. It requires big computers and a lot of efforts.

Mining cryptocurrencies have been a well-known approach to profit in the digital market, however, Bitcoin and different coins have turned out to be progressively costly to mine.

Now, Coming to Selfish Mining!

Now, if we talk about Selfish Mining, the name itself gives the idea.

Selfish mining is performed with the unethical motive of expanding the profit by a group of miners. Bitcoin was designed to decentralize creation and dissemination of cash. Be that as it may, egotistical mining can bring about the centralization of bitcoin mining tasks.

In the year 2013, two people named Emin Gün Sirer and Ittay Eyal who are Cornell researchers found the idea of selfish mining. In their paper, they demonstrated that mineworkers can acquire more bitcoins by newly produced blocks from the main blockchain and make a different fork.

Bitcoin mining depends on miners who unravel cryptographically complex riddles to produce coins. Pay from mining fluctuates because of the fact that the procedure is dependent on a few elements, from the problem of puzzles being solved to electricity expenses to the quality of internet through which the miner is working.



The bitcoin platform is arranged to reward miners in the extent to their mining capacity. This guarantees regardless of whether miners sort out themselves into huge pools, the prizes are as yet dependent on coins delivered by the individual miner in general blockchain.

In any case, the above situation expects that miners will make their newly generated blocks accessible on bitcoin's open blockchain. In their 2013 paper, Sirer and Eyal demonstrated that these miners can expand their offer of general income by covering up new blocks and making them accessible to frameworks inside their private system.



This way of unethical mining speeds up the discovery procedure and brings out infrastructure issues identified with mining, for example, network latency and electricity expenses.



Now, you must be thinking that even blockchains and bitcoins be hacked. But no, Selfish mining exists only in the paper. This technology is very much secure.

How? Let's see!

By doing an in-depth study, it came to the conclusion that Selfish Mining can be carried forward, only theoretically. It’s not practical.

The selfish mining exists only because it is the requirement of dumb miners. That is it. It is an argument for stupid Investors who set machines running and do not care about their benefit.

Selfish mining is very easy to detect and it can be blocked in today’s world, without making any change to the protocol.

Miners in this little world that is the bitcoin is friendly with known mining nodes which they can see discharging blocks all the time. IP address can possibly be anonymized, but then you are not eligible to be incorporated into the whitelist strategy, that the miners use.

That is, the miner who is unethical and is looking to bounce and hide IP addresses deprioritizes or hamper the communications with other different miners. The outcome is the more idleness and a higher orphan rate for the selfish miner. A selfish miner has to move forward with the unethical ways alone but the high number of ethical miners blocks the way and make the deal uncrackable for the selfish miner.

Another reason which makes Selfish mining non-existent is the economic and financial limitations. Even a semi-rational selfish miner expect to harm the bitcoin, only if it’s in the budget that is the attacker or the selfish miner will try to minimize the total level of loss.

Selfish Mining cannot exist for the basic certainty that there are no financial gains that can be accomplished through the system and to say the truth, a similar object can be accomplished using a far lower investment but if mined ethically.

Conclusion

To conclude, it's very clear now that selfish mining is non-existent in the practical world. None of the individual or company who thinks wisely will spend a lot of energy and money, in damaging the network.



If they can earn the revenue by ethical ways and that too with the same efforts and lesser investment then why would anyone invest more just to be a loner?



Miners are smart enough to make a right choice.



Let us know What you think of Selfish Miners affecting the crypto functioning in the comments below!!