Block Double-Submission Attack: Block Withholding Can Be Self-Destructive

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the core security mechanism of Bitcoin, the first and financially biggest cryptocurrency. This concept began as an efficient spam e-mail mitigation technique. Meanwhile, it encountered several major security issues in the decentralized environment of blockchain. One of them is a Block WithHolding (BWH) attack that can exploit a widespread and cooperative environment called a mining pool. This attack takes advantage of untrustworthy relationships between mining pools and participating agents. Moreover, detecting or responding to attacks is challenging due to the nature of mining pools. In this paper, however, we suggest that BWH attacks also have a similar trust problem. Because a BWH attacker cannot have complete control over BWH agents, they can betray the belonging mining pool and seek further benefits by trading with victims. We prove that this betrayal is not only valid in all attack parameters but also provides double benefits; finally, it is the best strategy for BWH agents. Furthermore, our study implies that BWH attacks may encounter self-destruction of their own revenue, contrary to their intention.