Selfish Mining

Selfish mining is a controversial strategy in blockchain mining where a miner deliberately withholds newly discovered blocks instead of broadcasting them to the network. By keeping these blocks private, the miner can build a longer chain in secret, gaining a competitive advantage over other miners. Once the private chain is long enough, the selfish miner releases it to the public, causing competing miners to discard their work on the shorter chain. This strategy allows the selfish miner to claim more block rewards, but it comes at the cost of reducing the overall security and efficiency of the network.

The selfish mining strategy exploits the consensus mechanism of proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains, where miners compete to solve cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. By withholding blocks, selfish miners can manipulate the system to earn more rewards, effectively disrupting the network's fair competition principles. This behavior undermines the decentralization and security of the blockchain, as it incentivizes other miners to follow suit, potentially leading to centralization and instability.