A Game-Theoretic Defense Mechanism Against Blockchain Denial-of-Service Attacks in Bitcoin

Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized digital currency, offers a high degree of security and transparency with its distributed network based on blockchain technology. However, with the widespread use of Bitcoin and other blockchain systems, cyberattacks have become one of the major issues threatening their stability and security. Among them, BDoS (Blockchain Denial of Service) attacks and SDoS (Selfish Denial of Service) attacks, as new types of denial-of-service attacks, especially pose a significant threat to the Bitcoin network. Since the Bitcoin network adopts the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism, BDoS and SDoS attacks force miners to stop mining or waste computing resources by exploiting the blockchain reward mechanism and creating chain forks. In this paper, based on blockchain technology and game theory, we propose an effective defense strategy to avoid denial-of-service attacks on the blockchain, and the scheme does not require modification of the existing blockchain protocol.