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What 'exactly' is selfish mining?

If it just means that you build new blocks on top of the most recent block that you mined yourself, then that won't work for a long time unless you have at least 51%

So I guess it's something slightly more subtle; e.g. they'll try to build on their own block, but will give up every time they fall X blocks behind.

Is that it? And what is X?

I can see how that could work if you have less than 51% of the hashrate. Where 'work' is 'steal some block rewards and encourage other miners to switch off'

Saberhagen The Nameless 4mo ago

Exactly. It's simply hiding a block you mined from the network and building on top of it in an attempt to get rewards from subsequent blocks for yourself.

Works more often over time the higher % of network hashrate you have of course.

My main point was they never reached 51% but that is what Qubic claimed on their website and what the headlines are running with. But no one is verifying anything of course.

I think they briefly had ~35% hashrate at their peak briefly but can't sustain that consistently.

They hover around 21% on average if you keep your eye on my link in that post.

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Discussion

SatsAndSports 4mo ago

Ah yes. That's very slightly different from what I imagined; I didn't see how it can be beneficial to sometimes hide a block.

If the selfish mining is successful, other miners will see their returns decrease as their block rewards are 'stolen'.

This means they will drop off the network. Therefore, we'll get the 51% attack simply because the selfish miners successfully push the other miners off

Does that make sense?

Saberhagen The Nameless 4mo ago

I don't think it will work in the long run.

It's limited periods of time they have a burst of hashrate to do it which is what I think is part of their clever marketing campaign to convince people they're taking over (besides having much less hashrate on average and significantly less than 51%).

They can't do it consistently and the larger mining pools can also do it back to them especially during the lulls.

But yes, if they could keep it up constantly I think you're right that could be a potential outcome. It gets exponentially better for you the closer you get to 51% iirc

All they have achieved so far ironically is decentralizing total network hashrate. They are now another large competitive mining pool among the existing large three. The large red "unknown hash" in that link was previously 1-5% and hardly existed. It's now at ~22%.