1. Ethereum Proof-of-Stake under Scrutiny
- Author
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Pavloff, Ulysse, Amoussou-Guenou, Yackolley, and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara
- Subjects
FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Cryptography and Security ,Computer Science - Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing ,Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC) ,Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) - Abstract
Ethereum has undergone a recent change called \textit{the Merge}, which made Ethereum a Proof-of-Stake blockchain shifting closer to BFT consensus. Ethereum, which wished to keep the best of the two protocols designs (BFT and Nakomoto-style), now has an involved consensus protocol as its core. The result is a blockchain being possibly produced in a tree-like form while participants try to finalize blocks. Several attacks jeopardizing liveness have been found in this new setting. The Ethereum community has responded by creating a patch. We discovered a new attack on the patched protocol. To support our analysis, we propose a new formalization of the properties of liveness and availability of the Ethereum blockchain, and we provide a pseudo-code. We believe this formalization to be helpful for other analyses as well. Our results yield that the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake has probabilistic liveness, influenced by the parameter describing the time frame allowed for validators to change their mind about the current main chain.
- Published
- 2022
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