Princeton Research Claims China Motivated to "Kill" Bitcoin, Selfish Miners Governing 74 Percent of Network

The paper begins its conjecture by calling out the dominance of Chinese businesses mining Bitcoin, making the protocol "Heavily centralized." Researchers allege that six mining pools control mining-with five located in China-and together, they make up 80 percent of the Bitcoin's hashing power.

With much of the hashing power pooled by the Chinese, miners can influence what happens on the Bitcoin network, and perhaps, even spoof transactions to China's benefits.

The research pointed out the five mining pools in China comprise 74 percent of Bitcoin hash power, an evidently "Unsettling" situation.

Blocks mined in China are in proximity to a large share of hash power, meaning validations and consensus are reached faster than blocks elsewhere.

Researchers note non-Chinese miners face increased latency-or a rise in hashing power - to compete for rewards within the network, as China controls the flow of information for those outside its borders.

The nefarious step is achieved by mining "Empty blocks," which do not contain any transactional data provide a reward to miners while consuming expensive resources for the process.

To back their claims, the paper combined the average rates of empty blocks produced by each mining pool, noting those originating in China created a considerably high percentage of empty blocks, with over 7 percent.

Mining empty blocks make the network less efficient, which led the researchers to question why the mining of empty blocks incentivized the Chinese miners.

In total, the research listed out 19 attack vectors that are available to Chinese mining pools, broadly classified under four categories: disruption, censorship, deanonymization, and weakening consensus.

Of these, the deadliest ones involve killing off the Bitcoin network by forcing non-Chinese miners out and combining all hash power to control Bitcoin, in a move dubbed "Goldfinger attack." Another is to "Weaponize" the country's control over the network to destabilize foreign economies depending on the pioneer cryptocurrency to generate meaningful industry.