Modeling and analysis of block arrival times in the Bitcoin blockchain

Abstract

In the original Bitcoin paper and other research papers since, it is assumed that Bitcoin blocks are mined at the instants of a homogeneous Poisson process. Based on blockchain block arrival data and stochastic analysis of the block arrival process, we demonstrate that this is not the case. We present a framework for studying the block arrival process, including two refined mathematical models for block arrivals, determined by combining models for a period of constant difficulty and how the difficulty evolves over time.