Efficient and Secure TSA for the Tangle

Abstract: The Tangle is the data structure used to store transactions in the IOTA cryptocurrency. In the Tangle, each block has two parents. As a result, the blocks do not form a chain, but a directed acyclic graph. In traditional Blockchain, a new block is appended to the heaviest chain in case of fork. In the Tangle, the parent selection is done by the Tip Selection Algorithm (TSA). In this paper, we make some important observations about the security of existing TSAs. We then propose a new TSA that has low complexity and is more secure than previous TSAs.