Following the Altair upgrade of the Ethereum network, the protocol’s native crypto went to a new all-time record high. Altair is the next step for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) move. However, a newly submitted white paper says that a group of Stanford University scientists along with the Ethereum Foundation think there are three vectors of attack “against a proof-of-stake Ethereum” blockchain.
The Ethereum network now has a PoW (proof-of-work) mechanism and in time, the protocol wants to completely move into a PoS network. New upgrades such as Berlin, Altair, and London have been applied to help the move to PoS. Just recently, after Altair was finished, the price for ether skyrocketed to new all-time highs at $4,467 each.
At this same time, network transfer fees have also went up significantly as much as $50 for the average ether transaction this Saturday morning. Furthermore, this Saturday morning in the United States vertical trends from Twitter showed the term “ETH 2.0” started going up. Some of the people discussing the ethereum 2.0 upgrade have published a new white paper written by scientists from Stanford and the Ethereum Foundation.
The BTC supporter Tuur Demeester shared this paper over the weekend and two quotes from the paper that say how an adversary might attack the chain. The paper said to be “Three Attacks on Proof-of-Stake Ethereum” was written on October 19.
Quotes from ETH 2.0 attacks paper, via @KyleLogiks:
“With 99.6% probability an adversary with .09% stake can execute a 1-record for any given day”
“Under adversarial network delay, an adversary can perform a 10-reorg by merely controlling 19 validators”https://t.co/HGazdB0acV pic.twitter.com/MsZoyUGdev
— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) October 30, 2021
The white paper was done by Joachim Neu, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Barnabé Monnot, Ertem Nusret Tas, Aditya Asgaonkar, and David Tse. The white paper says that two Ethereum network attacks were possible in recent times and the paper’s writers refined these techniques.
In addition to their refinement of the first two attacks which theoretically form a “short-range reorganization” and one “adversarial network delay,” the Stanford scientists also had a third attack.
“Combining techniques from these refined attacks, we made a third attack which allows a person with a very small stake and no propagation control to cause an even long-range consensus chain reorganization,” the paper’s authors said.
Meanwhile, critics of the Ethereum network used this paper to showcase the potential vulnerabilities connected with these attacks when the network moves to a complete PoS system. The creator of the Chia project and Bittorrent, Bram Cohen, also mentioned the new study this Saturday.
Some issues with ETH2 consensus "we obtain a third attack which allows an adversary with vanishingly small fraction of stake to cause even long-range consensus chain reorganizations" https://t.co/Vz3KG3ai1W
— Bram Cohen???? (@bramcohen) October 30, 2021
Author: Steven Sinclaire
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