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Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Conference contribution/Paper › peer-review
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Conference contribution/Paper › peer-review
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TY - GEN
T1 - An Exploration of Bitcoin Mining Practices
T2 - 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
AU - Khairuddin, Irni
AU - Sas, Corina
PY - 2019/5/4
Y1 - 2019/5/4
N2 - Bitcoin blockchain technology is a distributed ledger of nodes authorizing transactions between anonymous parties. Its key actors are miners using computational power to solve mathematical problems for validating transactions. By sharing blockchain's characteristics, mining is a decentralized, transparent and unregulated practice, less explored in HCI, so we know little about miners' motivations and experiences, and how these may impact on different dimensions of trust. This paper reports on interviews with 20 bitcoin miners about their practices and trust challenges. Findings contribute to HCI theories by extending the exploration of blockchain's characteristics relevant to trust with the competitiveness dimension underpinning the social organization of mining. We discuss the risks of collaborative mining due to centralization and dishonest administrators, and conclude with design implications highlighting the need for tools monitoring the distribution of rewards in collaborative mining, tools tracking data centers' authorization and reputation, and tools supporting the development of decentralized pools.
AB - Bitcoin blockchain technology is a distributed ledger of nodes authorizing transactions between anonymous parties. Its key actors are miners using computational power to solve mathematical problems for validating transactions. By sharing blockchain's characteristics, mining is a decentralized, transparent and unregulated practice, less explored in HCI, so we know little about miners' motivations and experiences, and how these may impact on different dimensions of trust. This paper reports on interviews with 20 bitcoin miners about their practices and trust challenges. Findings contribute to HCI theories by extending the exploration of blockchain's characteristics relevant to trust with the competitiveness dimension underpinning the social organization of mining. We discuss the risks of collaborative mining due to centralization and dishonest administrators, and conclude with design implications highlighting the need for tools monitoring the distribution of rewards in collaborative mining, tools tracking data centers' authorization and reputation, and tools supporting the development of decentralized pools.
U2 - 10.1145/3290605.3300859
DO - 10.1145/3290605.3300859
M3 - Conference contribution/Paper
SN - 9781450359702
BT - Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - ACM
Y2 - 4 May 2019 through 9 May 2019
ER -