Incentive-Based Demand Response Program for Blockchain Network

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer network that maintains a shared and trusted ledger by packaging transactions into blocks. Blockchain technology powers Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency. Within blockchain networks, miners, and specialized computers validate each new block by solving computationally intensive cryptographic puzzles to confirm the transactions within. To make decisions on the validity of new blocks, a consensus mechanism must be performed, which is a complex and time-consuming operation that consumes a significant amount of electrical energy. In this article, we first evaluate the profitability of Bitcoin miners in terms of energy prices. We then present a mining control algorithm that decides to turn on / off miners based on the energy price, Bitcoin price, and total network hash rate. Additionally, we propose an incentive-based demand response program to effectively control the power load in the network and balance supply and demand. We model the demand response program as a mixed integer linear programming optimization problem. Our simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed demand response program.