The Time to Consensus in a Blockchain: Insights into Bitcoin's "6 Blocks Rule''

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Dey, Partha S., Gopalan, Aditya S., Subramanian, Vijay G.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Dey, Partha S.
Gopalan, Aditya S.
Subramanian, Vijay G.
author_facet Dey, Partha S.
Gopalan, Aditya S.
Subramanian, Vijay G.
contents We investigate the time to consensus in Nakamoto blockchains. Specifically, we consider two competing growth processes, labeled \emph{honest} and \emph{adversarial}, and determine the time after which the honest process permananetly exceeds the adversarial process. This is done via queueing techniques. The predominant difficulty is that the honest growth process is subject to \emph{random delays}. In a stylized Bitcoin model, we compute the Laplace transform for the time to consensus and verify it via simulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_12687
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Time to Consensus in a Blockchain: Insights into Bitcoin's "6 Blocks Rule''
Dey, Partha S.
Gopalan, Aditya S.
Subramanian, Vijay G.
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Probability
We investigate the time to consensus in Nakamoto blockchains. Specifically, we consider two competing growth processes, labeled \emph{honest} and \emph{adversarial}, and determine the time after which the honest process permananetly exceeds the adversarial process. This is done via queueing techniques. The predominant difficulty is that the honest growth process is subject to \emph{random delays}. In a stylized Bitcoin model, we compute the Laplace transform for the time to consensus and verify it via simulation.
title The Time to Consensus in a Blockchain: Insights into Bitcoin's "6 Blocks Rule''
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12687