Implementation of an efficient, portable and platform-agnostic cryptocurrency mining algorithm for Internet of Things devices

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight, portable cryptocurrency mining algorithm suitable for IoT devices, enabling mining without full blockchain synchronization, demonstrated across diverse platforms.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, platform-agnostic mining algorithm that operates efficiently on low-power IoT devices without requiring full blockchain download.

Findings

Successfully implemented on PC, ESP32, emulator, and PSP

Demonstrates feasibility of mining on resource-constrained devices

Provides publicly available implementation for reproducibility

Abstract

Recently, there has been a remarkable amount of research being done in both, the fields of Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain technology synergises well with IoT, solving key problems such as privacy, concerns with interoperability and security. However, the consensus mechanisms that allows trustless parties to maintain an agreement, the same algorithms that underpins cryptocurrency mining, are usually extremely computationally expensive, making implementation on low-power IoT devices difficult. More importantly, mining requires downloading and synchronizing hundred of gigabytes worth of blocks which is far beyond the capabilities of most IoT devices. In this paper, we present an efficient, portable and platform-agnostic cryptocurrency mining algorithm using the Stratum protocol to avoid downloading the entire blockchain. We implement the algorithm in four different platforms- PC, ESP32, an emulator and an old PlayStation Portable (PSP) to demonstrate that it is indeed possible for any device to mine cryptocurrencies with no assumptions except the ability to connect to the internet. To make sure of ease of portability on any platform and for reproducibility of the reported results we make the implementation publicly available with detailed instructions at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/cryptominer.