An analysis of griefs and griefing factors

Abstract

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We consider griefing factors, a system for measurement of the cost-effectiveness of sabotage, which have been used to analyze the attack resistance of blockchain systems. Attackers are said to “grief” if they accept economic harm to themselves in order to harm others; the griefing factor is the ratio of the harm done to the victim to the harm taken on by the attacker. In this work, we study the mathematical properties of this notion, particularly focusing on how the presence of players willing to engage in griefs at varying griefing factors impacts the equilibria present in games.

Keywords

• sabotage
• griefing
• equilibria
• utility functions
• blockchain