Last updated on May 3rd, 2024 at 08:17 pm
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has raised concerns about the potential overload of Ethereum’s social consensus in a recent blog post titled “Don’t Overload Ethereum’s Consensus.” Published on May 21, 2023, Buterin discussed the significance of this issue and outlined remedies and techniques to address it.
Buterin stressed the critical nature of Ethereum’s consensus mechanism and the need to prevent its breakdown. He assured that in such a scenario, the extensive Ethereum community, consisting of engineers and users, would closely monitor the blockchain to facilitate its proper recovery.
Buterin argued that overloading social consensus on Ethereum comes with significant risks. He explained that a Layer 2 solution with the largest user base would be the most secure, but any bug leading to fund theft could result in substantial losses. In such cases, the community might decide to fork the blockchain for fund recovery, which carries its own set of risks.
The Ethereum co-founder cautioned that if left unaddressed, this process could burden the community with an increasing number of mandates. The Ethereum community would then face the difficult choice between recurring chain splits or the establishment of a de facto formalized bureaucracy with full control over the chain.
To mitigate these risks, Buterin proposed various remedies. He suggested solutions involving the use of price oracles, but noted that many existing oracles are not fully decentralized or rely on validator-voting-based mechanisms. Buterin also advised minimizing reliance on cross-chain bridges due to significant attacks on such bridges in recent years.
Community members have reacted to Buterin’s post. Twitter user Idan Levin agreed with Buterin, expressing concerns about the possibility of a chain reaction of slashing that could harm Ethereum’s consensus. Another user, @Jason Lowery, highlighted the importance of Proof-of-Work (PoW) as a way to achieve a zero-trust consensus, tying consensus to an external entity (electric power) that is not easily exploitable.
Great read @VitalikButerin. I do think the restaking leveraging risk (rehypothecation) was underplayed. It might end up like the 2008 MBS case where risk got so packaged and obscured that nobody knew what was what.
If we’re not careful, we could end up with a chain reaction of…
— Idan Levin (@0xidanlevin) May 22, 2023
These discussions are still ongoing and it reflects the efforts within the Ethereum community to ensure the stability and security of the network’s social consensus.
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