{"paper":{"title":"Temporary Power Adjusting Withholding Attack","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"Temporary withholding in pool attacks yields unbounded extra rewards over permanent withholding as attacker size shrinks.","cross_cats":["cs.DC","cs.IT","math.IT","math.PR"],"primary_cat":"cs.CR","authors_text":"Mustafa Doger, Sennur Ulukus","submitted_at":"2026-04-15T17:55:56Z","abstract_excerpt":"We consider the block withholding attacks on pools, more specifically the state-of-the-art Power Adjusting Withholding (PAW) attack. We propose a generalization called Temporary PAW (T-PAW) where the adversary withholds a fPoW from pool mining at most $T$-time even when no other block is mined. We show that PAW attack corresponds to $T\\to\\infty$ and is not optimal. In fact, the extra reward of T-PAW compared to PAW improves by an unbounded factor as adversarial hash fraction $\\alpha$, pool size $\\beta$ and adversarial network influence $\\gamma$ decreases. For example, the extra reward of T-PAW"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"the extra reward of T-PAW compared to PAW improves by an unbounded factor as adversarial hash fraction α, pool size β and adversarial network influence γ decreases. For example, the extra reward of T-PAW is 22 times that of PAW when an adversary targets a pool with (α,β,γ)=(0.05,0.05,0).","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The modeling assumes rational miners optimize over a specific reward function with parameters α, β, γ and a fixed T, without accounting for real-world detection, retaliation, or pool countermeasures that could eliminate the advantage.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"T-PAW generalizes PAW by limiting withholding to at most T time units, producing unboundedly higher extra rewards than PAW as adversary hash fraction, pool size, and network influence decrease, while making honest mining sub-optimal with non-trivial gains.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Temporary withholding in pool attacks yields unbounded extra rewards over permanent withholding as attacker size shrinks.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"5f03712f00d755e355f5b74bf536ca9552bb16af685906f760f84ed2b8ff9938"},"source":{"id":"2604.14135","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"56a69acb-42b8-475e-8594-251cdd71b558","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-10T12:50:03.073161Z","strongest_claim":"the extra reward of T-PAW compared to PAW improves by an unbounded factor as adversarial hash fraction α, pool size β and adversarial network influence γ decreases. For example, the extra reward of T-PAW is 22 times that of PAW when an adversary targets a pool with (α,β,γ)=(0.05,0.05,0).","one_line_summary":"T-PAW generalizes PAW by limiting withholding to at most T time units, producing unboundedly higher extra rewards than PAW as adversary hash fraction, pool size, and network influence decrease, while making honest mining sub-optimal with non-trivial gains.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The modeling assumes rational miners optimize over a specific reward function with parameters α, β, γ and a fixed T, without accounting for real-world detection, retaliation, or pool countermeasures that could eliminate the advantage.","pith_extraction_headline":"Temporary withholding in pool attacks yields unbounded extra rewards over permanent withholding as attacker size shrinks."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2604.14135/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}