PDoS: A Profitable Denial-of-Service Attack against Proof-of-Work Blockchain Liveness

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12450v1
• Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2026 05:16:01 GMT
• Title: PDoS: A Profitable Denial-of-Service Attack against Proof-of-Work Blockchain Liveness
• Abstract summary: We present PDoS, a hybrid attack that combines block header signal deterrence with parasitic revenue extraction.<n>In high-fee or high-MEV environments, higher block value can make PoW systems less secure by increasing the attacker's parasitic revenue.<n>To the best of our knowledge, PDoS is the first attack to demonstrate that disrupting PoW blockchain liveness can be economically self-sustaining and even profitable.
• Score: 9.160986728068094
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The security and liveness of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains fundamentally depend on the economic rationality of miners. Existing incentive-driven denial-of-service attacks, such as BDoS, can deter rational miners from participating, but require the attacker to continuously absorb substantial economic losses and are therefore difficult to sustain in high-value networks. Meanwhile, prior infiltration-based withholding attacks are designed to extract revenue rather than to directly disrupt chain liveness. We present PDoS, a hybrid attack that combines block header signal deterrence with parasitic revenue extraction. PDoS disrupts blockchain liveness while exploiting the victim pool's share-reward mechanism to subsidize the attack cost, thereby lowering the adversarial hash-power threshold required to induce rational miners to shut down. We further show a counterintuitive result: in high-fee or high-MEV environments, higher block value can make PoW systems less secure by increasing the attacker's parasitic revenue and pushing the attack across the break-even point into a self-sustaining, or even profitable, regime. To the best of our knowledge, PDoS is the first attack to demonstrate that disrupting PoW blockchain liveness can be economically self-sustaining and even profitable.

Related papers

• All-out Attack: Optimal Block Withholding Under Pay-Per-Share Scheme [45.776687601070705]
  We analyze Block Withholding attacks under Pay-Per-Share and Full-PPS schemes for Nakamoto-style blockchains.<n>Under PPS/FPPS, the optimal strategy for a BWH attacker is the All-out Attack (AoA)<n> advanced BWH variants such as Fork After Withholding (FAW) yield no additional profit under PPS/FPPS.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-07-01T17:46:37Z)
• The Economics of Proof-of-Useful-Work [4.551855760807635]
  An emerging alternative -- proof of useful work (PoUW) -- enables the same computation simultaneously secure the blockchain and generate economically valuable output.<n>PoUW is often criticized on economic grounds: if the work is useful, attackers might be "paid to attack," potentially weakening security.<n>We develop a competitive computation model of a PoUW blockchain in which compute can be allocated across pure mining, pure useful work -- instantiated as machine learning inference -- or "PoUW" work that produces both with computational overheads.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-04T20:39:32Z)
• Incentive Attacks in BTC: Short-Term Revenue Changes and Long-Term Efficiencies [45.776687601070705]
  Bitcoin's Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) has been a source of vulnerability for incentive attacks such as selfish mining, block withholding and coin hopping strategies.<n>We study the short-term revenue change per hashpower of the adversarial and honest miners for these incentive attacks.<n>For block withholding strategies, it turns out, the honest miners outside the pool profit from the attack, usually even more than the attacker both in the short-term and the long-term.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-11-14T18:18:17Z)
• SoK: A Review of Cross-Chain Bridge Hacks in 2023 [36.136619420474766]
  Cross-chain bridges remain vulnerable to various attacks despite sophisticated designs and security measures.<n>This paper analyzes recent cross-chain bridge hacks in 2022 and 2023 and examines the exploited vulnerabilities.<n>The findings contribute to developing industry-wide standards for bridge security and operational resilience.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-01-06T23:05:14Z)
• Collaborative Proof-of-Work: A Secure Dynamic Approach to Fair and Efficient Blockchain Mining [0.1759252234439348]
  This paper introduces a novel Collaborative Proof-of-Work (CPoW) mining approach designed to enhance efficiency and fairness in the network.<n>By addressing the centralization and energy inefficiencies of traditional mining, this research contributes to a more sustainable blockchain ecosystem.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-12-01T05:59:27Z)
• BM-PAW: A Profitable Mining Attack in the PoW-based Blockchain System [8.156709861487697]
  We introduce a novel mining strategy, named BM-PAW, which yields superior rewards for both the attacker and the targeted pool.<n>We propose practical countermeasures to mitigate these novel pool attacks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-11-09T13:59:55Z)
• Examining Attacks on Consensus and Incentive Systems in Proof-of-Work Blockchains: A Systematic Literature Review [0.0]
  Bitcoin's security relies on a decentralized ledger consisting of a consensus and an incentive mechanism. As Bitcoin's acceptance grows, it faces increasing threats from attacks targeting these mechanisms. This paper begins by examining individual attacks executed in isolation and their profitability. It then explores how combining these attacks with each other or with other malicious and non-malicious strategies can enhance their overall effectiveness and profitability.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-11-01T04:18:42Z)
• Commitment Attacks on Ethereum's Reward Mechanism [4.524180577541776]
  We show a series of commitment attacks on LMD GHOST, a core part of the consensus's consensus mechanism.<n>We introduce a novel reward mechanism that restores the voters' role as a check against proposer power.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-28T12:17:17Z)
• Enhancing Trust and Privacy in Distributed Networks: A Comprehensive Survey on Blockchain-based Federated Learning [51.13534069758711]
  Decentralized approaches like blockchain offer a compelling solution by implementing a consensus mechanism among multiple entities. Federated Learning (FL) enables participants to collaboratively train models while safeguarding data privacy. This paper investigates the synergy between blockchain's security features and FL's privacy-preserving model training capabilities.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-28T07:08:26Z)
• Graph Attention Network-based Block Propagation with Optimal AoI and Reputation in Web 3.0 [59.94605620983965]
  We design a Graph Attention Network (GAT)-based reliable block propagation optimization framework for blockchain-enabled Web 3.0. To achieve the reliability of block propagation, we introduce a reputation mechanism based on the subjective logic model. Considering that the GAT possesses the excellent ability to process graph-structured data, we utilize the GAT with reinforcement learning to obtain the optimal block propagation trajectory.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-20T01:58:38Z)
• Transaction Capacity, Security and Latency in Blockchains [45.776687601070705]
  We analyze how secure a block is after the block becomes $k$-deep, i.e., security-latency, for Nakamoto consensus.<n>We connect the security-latency analysis to sustainable transaction rate of the queue system.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-02-15T17:43:13Z)
• Generative AI-enabled Blockchain Networks: Fundamentals, Applications, and Case Study [73.87110604150315]
  Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has emerged as a promising solution to address challenges of blockchain technology. In this paper, we first introduce GAI techniques, outline their applications, and discuss existing solutions for integrating GAI into blockchains.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-01-28T10:46:17Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.