Enhancing Mining Pool Performance and Security Through Optimized Cluster‐Trust Consensus Mechanism in Blockchain Networks

ABSTRACT This research presents an innovative method for enhancing security in pool mining consensus within Blockchain systems. Block mining is a demanding endeavor in decentralized systems, leading many miners to congregate within mining pools. The inherent traits of Blockchain technology, defined by decentralization and transparency, create a conducive environment for extensive mining pool participation. However, the inclusion of all the miners into mining raises concerns about miners' consensus reliability, malicious attacks, fraud detection rates, and variance in miners' incentives. These consequences necessitate the encouragement of trusted miners to pool consensus to ensure security. A clustering‐based trust model in blockchain for pool mining consensus (CBTMB‐PM) has been proposed to address the miner's trust dynamics and improve pool consensus efficiency. Miner's trust dynamics are assessed through clusters based on miners' behavioral attributes, which encompass historical performance, readiness, and indirect feedback recommendations of miners to improve overall pool reliability. Furthermore, a Cluster‐Trust Proof of Work (CTPoW) consensus protocol has been proposed to enhance pool efficiency, ensuring that only reliable miners contribute to the consensus process by filtering out untrusted miners in the consensus process. Experimental and theoretical evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of the CTPoW protocol. The effectiveness of the model is tested using a partially decentralized open‐source Hyperledger Fabric framework for parameters such as block authorization time, validation time, block creation time, processing time, and confirmation time to analyze the practical changes observed by a group of miners through off‐chain mode. It has excellent performance by comparison with some other state‐of‐the‐art.