UNCHAINED: The Black Swan Event That Could Cause a Fork in Ethereum (Again)
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The huge risks of a bug occurring to an Ethereum “supermajority” execution client were laid bare this week.
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This week a major potential risk to Ethereum was highlighted by a bug that surfaced in Nethermind, a minority execution client. While the bug was fixed quickly, it raised the question of what would happen to the blockchain if Geth, which is used by more than two-thirds of validators and so is considered a “supermajority client,” had a bug. The situation could potentially result in a catastrophic fork of Ethereum.
Ethereum developer Lefteris Karapetsas joined Unchained to discuss the different scenarios of what could happen, the potential impact of a supermajority client issue on staking services such as Lido, why he feels the incentive system is poorly designed, and what other solutions are out there to address the lack of client diversity.
Show highlights |
- What a consensus issue is in Ethereum and what happened with Nethermind last weekend
- Why it would be a big problem if a supermajority client had a bug
- The potential impact on staking services such as Lido
- Why Lefteris feels like he is reliving the historic Ethereum DAO hack all over again
- Whether the largest entities running nodes will start pursuing client diversity
- How the data on the prevalence of specific Ethereum execution clients is not verifiable or programmatic, making it less transparent and difficult to analyze
- Why Lefteris believes that the incentive system is not designed to achieve client diversity
- Whether there are developments in the works to try to solve the lack of client diversity
Thank you to our sponsors! Popcorn Network | iTrustCapital
Guest |
Lefteris Karapetsas, Founder of Rotkiapp
Previous appearance on Unchained: Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree
Links |
Unchained:
The Chopping Block: Data Availability & Why It’s Important
CoinDesk: Bug That Took Down 8% of Ethereum's Validators Sparks Worries About Even Bigger Outage
The Defiant: Ethereum Software Client Centralization Sparks Concern
Crypto.news: Nethermind rolls out urgent fix for block processing bug in Ethereum client
Lukasz Rosmej’s tweet that minority client Nethermind had a consensus issue
Lefteris’ tweet on a supermajority Ethereum client bug
Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong’s tweet on what he’d do in a censorship resistance request scenario
Run the majority client at your own peril! by Dankrad Feist
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Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for listening to Unchained, your No Hype Resource for All Things Crypto, on the Coin Desk podcast network. |
| 0:06.5 | You can also listen to the episodes on the Unchained feed earlier if you subscribe there. |
| 0:11.7 | Plus, check out all our content on our website, Unchained Crypto.com. |
| 0:16.5 | A bag of this type happens in a supermajority client, which means a client that is used more than 67% of the network. |
| 0:25.8 | I think this is how they define it. |
| 0:27.6 | Then we have a problem. |
| 0:28.9 | Because the way that the consensus algorithm works right now, that means that they will not just drop off the network. |
| 0:35.8 | They will be on their own network, |
| 0:37.6 | which will be the wrong network because it's a bug and it would not be following the specification |
| 0:41.7 | of Ethereum, but they would even finalize this network. |
| 0:44.9 | Because with 67% more than two-thirds, you basically have the ability to finalize the chain. |
| 0:53.0 | And once this gets done, you cannot go to the other chain. |
| 1:00.3 | Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your new hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, |
| 1:05.3 | Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior |
| 1:10.4 | editor of Forbes |
| 1:11.2 | was the first mainstream reader reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the January 26th, |
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| 1:40.5 | Learn more at volcraft.io. |
| 1:43.4 | Today's guest is Leverterris Carapetis, founder of Rocky. |
... |
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