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Documents authored by Almashaqbeh, Ghada

Artifact
Software
DOI: 10.4230/artifacts.27966
CSSL-UConn/temp-sim

Authors: Colin Finkbeiner, Connor Shaw, and Ghada Almashaqbeh

Abstract
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Colin Finkbeiner, Connor Shaw, Ghada Almashaqbeh. CSSL-UConn/temp-sim (Software, Source Code). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@misc{dagstuhl-artifact-27966,
   title = {{CSSL-UConn/temp-sim}}, 
   author = {Finkbeiner, Colin and Shaw, Connor and Almashaqbeh, Ghada},
   note = {Software, swhId: \href{https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:dir:71dbe9c9ecdc32669573f00c1ef9950caad6bd2f;origin=https://github.com/CSSL-UConn/temp-sim;visit=swh:1:snp:73a02f02d4fcbcd3568ff71628d19ea2a776c428;anchor=swh:1:rev:b25e8e2e602772a0285b908eb195432747eb0ce1}{\texttt{swh:1:dir:71dbe9c9ecdc32669573f00c1ef9950caad6bd2f}} (visited on 2026-10-02)},
   url = {https://github.com/CSSL-UConn/temp-sim},
   doi = {10.4230/artifacts.27966},
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.29
When Does Being Selfish Pay Off? Temporal Composability and Profitability in Selfish Mining

Authors: Colin Finkbeiner, Connor Shaw, and Ghada Almashaqbeh

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 395, 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026)

Abstract
Selfish mining undermines incentive compatibility of proof-of-work blockchains, letting a miner earn disproportionate rewards at a hashrate lower than the majority threshold. A decade of research has investigated whether a strategy is profitable, however, far less is understood about when it becomes profitable. Timing is critical since selfish mining operates at a loss before it turns a profit, typically requiring tens of weeks to break even in the classic case. In this paper, we present a holistic study of the time-to-profitability (TTP) of existing selfish mining strategies structured around four contributions. First, in the single-attacker setting, we characterize TTP across the full strategy space and find that TTP-minimizing and profit-maximizing strategies frequently diverge, making attack horizon a critical metric. In particular, under realistic fee dynamics, the use of incentive transactions to recruit honest-but-rational miners enables reaching profitability up to 15× faster than classic selfish mining at the same hash rate. Second, we study TTP for the first time in the multi-attacker setting, showing that the difference in strategies between opposing attackers has a dramatic impact on join profitability. Third, we generalize intermittent selfish mining by examining temporal composition over the full strategy space and showing that its purported benefits are largely overstated; alternating strategies rarely outperforms the best static strategy in terms of TTP and long-term profits. Finally, and building on these findings, we investigate adaptive, state-conditioned strategy selection at the difficulty adjustment period (DAP) level. We compare a general-purpose LLM agent against a fixed decision-tree selector. We find that both selectors reliably identify profit-maximizing strategies from observed network conditions, at a low operational cost, thus lowering the expertise barrier to exploiting adaptive selfish mining.
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Colin Finkbeiner, Connor Shaw, and Ghada Almashaqbeh. When Does Being Selfish Pay Off? Temporal Composability and Profitability in Selfish Mining. In 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 395, pp. 29:1-29:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{finkbeiner_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2026.29,
  author =	{Finkbeiner, Colin and Shaw, Connor and Almashaqbeh, Ghada},
  title =	{{When Does Being Selfish Pay Off? Temporal Composability and Profitability in Selfish Mining}},
  booktitle =	{8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-451-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{395},
  editor =	{Kiayias, Aggelos and Kyropoulou, Maria},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-278839},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: Bitcoin, Proof of work, Selfish mining, Temporal mining strategies}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.26
Competitive Policies for Online Collateral Maintenance

Authors: Ghada Almashaqbeh, Sixia Chen, and Alexander Russell

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 316, 6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024)

Abstract
Layer-two blockchain protocols emerged to address scalability issues related to fees, storage cost, and confirmation delay of on-chain transactions. They aggregate off-chain transactions into fewer on-chain ones, thus offering immediate settlement and reduced transaction fees. To preserve security of the underlying ledger, layer-two protocols often work in a collateralized model; resources are committed on-chain to backup off-chain activities. A fundamental challenge that arises in this setup is determining a policy for establishing, committing, and replenishing the collateral in a way that maximizes the value of settled transactions. In this paper, we study this problem under two settings that model collateralized layer-two protocols. The first is a general model in which a party has an on-chain collateral C with a policy to decide on whether to settle or discard each incoming transaction. The policy also specifies when to replenish C based on the remaining collateral value. The second model considers a discrete setup in which C is divided among k wallets, each of which is of size C/k, such that when a wallet is full, and so cannot settle any incoming transactions, it will be replenished. We devise several online policies for these models, and show how competitive they are compared to optimal (offline) policies that have full knowledge of the incoming transaction stream. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study and formulate online competitive policies for collateral and wallet management in the blockchain setting.
Cite as

Ghada Almashaqbeh, Sixia Chen, and Alexander Russell. Competitive Policies for Online Collateral Maintenance. In 6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 316, pp. 26:1-26:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{almashaqbeh_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2024.26,
  author =	{Almashaqbeh, Ghada and Chen, Sixia and Russell, Alexander},
  title =	{{Competitive Policies for Online Collateral Maintenance}},
  booktitle =	{6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024)},
  pages =	{26:1--26:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-345-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{316},
  editor =	{B\"{o}hme, Rainer and Kiffer, Lucianna},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.26},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-209620},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.26},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain layer-two solutions, Wallets, Collateral management, Online algorithms, Competitive analysis}
}

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