Analysis of NEST Oracle Machine Facing Mining Pool Refusal to Pack Attacks

The NEST distributed Oracle Machine aims to enhance the reliability of the output data and the security of the system by allowing more on-chain users to participate in the price conversion relationship determination process. To address potential malicious quoting issues, NEST has designed a quoting-order matching submission verification mechanism, allowing validators to trade based on quotes and propose new quotes for correction.

However, the effective operation of this price correction mechanism relies on the timely appearance of order-eating transactions and new quotes in the new blocks on the chain. With the emergence of mining pools, the monopoly over transaction packaging rights becomes a potential problem. Large mining pools often prioritize packaging transactions that are beneficial to themselves or have higher fees, which may result in new quotes from the NEST Oracle Machine not being timely validated within the verification period, ultimately outputting incorrect price data.

In this type of attack, malicious Mining Pools first accumulate cryptocurrencies for arbitrage. They then make a quote to NEST that is significantly different from the actual market price. Due to the huge arbitrage opportunity, there will inevitably be validators who propose eating orders during the verification period to make corrections.

At this time, all Mining Pools face two choices: to pack the corrected transaction into the next block or not to pack it. This constitutes a completely informed static game with multiple independent rounds, and the final outcome depends on the returns of each participant under different decision combinations.

If the correction of the quote is chosen, the Mining Pool can immediately obtain a profit a. If not corrected, the Mining Pool can arbitrage after the quote is established, obtaining a higher profit b. However, the actual profit needs to consider the Mining Pool's hash power proportion and the probability of the quote being corrected by other Mining Pools.

Ultimately, the Mining Pool will choose whether to adjust the quotation based on its own hash power proportion and the ratio relationship of a and b, in order to reach a Nash equilibrium state. This type of attack is not only a problem faced by the NEST Oracle Machine, but also poses a challenge to the entire decentralized concept of blockchain. How to solve the problems brought by the Mining Pool is an unavoidable challenge on the road to achieving true decentralization.