Visual analytics of bitcoin mining pool evolution : on the road toward stability?

Natkamon Tovanich (1, 2, 3) , Nicolas Soulié (4, 5) , Petra Isenberg (2, 3)

1 IRT SystemX
2 AVIZ - Analysis and Visualization
3 LRI - Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique
4 IMT-BS - DEFI - Département Droit, Economie et Finances
5 LITEM - Laboratoire en Innovation, Technologies, Economie et Management (EA 7363)

We present our work on visual analytics tools to support the analysis of Bitcoin mining pool evolution. Mining blocks are a critical component of the Bitcoin ecosystem, helping to keep the system secure, valid, and stable. At the same time, mining is a resource-intensive activity that continues to get more and more difficult. Mining pools have emerged to address this issue and to ensure a more stable and predictable income by sharing computing power. Yet, increased centralization of the mining power is also not without dangers (e. g., the 51% attack), and, thus, it is important to better understand and analyze mining pool activities in Bitcoin. Here, we report three contributions: our extensive data collection on Bitcoin mining pools, our development of two custom visualizations, and our first exploratory data analysis leading to hypotheses and documented activities about pools' main features such as market share, reward rules, or location.

Mots clés: Bitcoin; Mining pools; Visual analytics

Domaines: Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]; Economies et finances

Natkamon Tovanich, Nicolas Soulié, Petra Isenberg. Visual analytics of bitcoin mining pool evolution : on the road toward stability?. 3rd International Workshop on Blockchains and Smart Contracts (BSC 2020-2021), held in conjunction with the 11th IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (IFIP NTMS 2021), Apr 2021, Paris, France. ⟨hal-02902465v1⟩