Ethereum needs to prepare for 51% attack! V God calls for raising the verification threshold and strengthening automated defense

This site (120bTC.coM): At the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) held in Brussels, Belgium from July 8th to 11th this week, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, delivered a special speech yesterday and discussed in depth Reinforce the importance of Ethereum’s base layer.

He mentioned that the advantage of the Ethereum ecosystem lies in its large and reasonably decentralized staking ecosystem, as well as its highly international and knowledgeable community; however, he also pointed out the weaknesses of Ethereum, such as the individual staking Difficulty, technical complexity of running a node, and concerns about transaction censorship.

Buterin: Censorship is one of the biggest risks

Buterin pointed out that "censorship" is one of the biggest risks facing the Ethereum ecosystem, which not only includes nodes' review of transactions, but also covers the way in which transactions are processed by malicious parties. Other technical issues.

Note: The “censorship” that Buterin refers to here usually refers to the ability of an individual or group to prevent specific transactions from being confirmed and recorded on the blockchain, which is usually related to 51% attacks.

In response to cyberattacks or censorship, Buterin proposed raising the quorum threshold (node ​​verification threshold) to 75% or above. He explained that this prevents potentially censored chains from reaching a finalized state. In other words, if an attacker or other malicious actor controls some nodes, raising the quorum threshold can make it more difficult for them to control the network, thus protecting the network from being manipulated or censored by a small number of nodes.

Ethereum should respond to 51% attacks in an automated way

Another idea for dealing with 51% attacks, Buterin advocates that it should be dealt with in a more automated way so that Ethereum can respond to such attacks quickly and effectively. In Buterin’s proposal: If you are a validator, your node will run a specific software. This software is able to automatically detect if a transaction or validator has been censored—that is, intentionally ignored or blocked. When the software detects censorship, it automatically takes anti-censorship measures. This means that the software will automatically counter the majority chain (the chain controlled by the attacker) and cause all honest nodes to coordinate in favor of the minority chain (the chain not controlled by the attacker). This automatic anti-censorship will be implemented through the software run by the nodes, ensuring that all honest nodes can automatically and consistently pivot and coordinate on the same uncensored chain without external instructions or manual intervention.

However, when it comes to automating the response to 51% attacks, Buterin also admitted that it is unlikely that the entire network will automatically switch to another fork because there are many practical limitations.

However, he emphasized that if we can get as close to this goal as possible, the effort required to rely on community consensus to solve problems will be greatly reduced. He also mentioned that the technical level should at least be able to come up with a clear winning solution for a soft fork (a slight protocol change that will not cause a lasting blockchain split), so that if there is a need to avoid the chain being reviewed, the community can We can organize and support this plan.

Simply put, Buterin hopes that technical solutions can simplify the community’s decision-making process in the face of cyber attacks, so that the community can quickly act in unison and move to a safe and unaffected chain.

A strong ecosystem must be simple

Buterin also emphasized his vision to allow most Ethereum users to run light clients on mobile devices to verify the base layer and L2. He said: If you want a strong ecosystem, it must be simple.

Therefore, protocol simplification became Buterin’s focus and emphasized the importance of improving Layer 1 while relying heavily on the advantages provided by L2 networks.

As an important leader of Ethereum, Buterin’s every speech attracts great attention from the blockchain community.

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