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by Gosper 1679 days ago
Written for public consumption that post conveys a great deal of certainty while eliding over doubts:

"Change fork choice rule to mitigate balancing and reorging attacks"

https://ethresear.ch/t/change-fork-choice-rule-to-mitigate-b...

And more fundamentally at the heart of the matter

https://ethresear.ch/t/comment-on-three-attacks-on-proof-of-...

> Moreover, there is a general argument that the attacker will always be able to keep the consensus from finalizing nomatter what the fix is.

> The argument simply comes from the fact, that mathematically provable binary consensus algorithms known in this universe have n2 behavior, and ETH2 is linear in n .

> Therefore, the only way to really fix ETH2 is to make it n2 . Otherwise it is unfixable from the math point of view. There will always be another attack.

> It may be that by continuing patching a fix after a fix after a fix one can end up with something that will work from an engineering point of view.

> This will be security by obscurity.

> But it will not be secure from the math point of view.

So while bodging in patches might work one day, it's an immature approach and a scary place to try store value.

The sheer number of moving parts create a scary amount of emergent complexity and complexity is the enemy of security.

Disclosure: I'm an early but now uncomfortable ETH holder.

2 comments

On the "fundamental" link, see this reply that appeared after you commented:

"The reason that Ethereum’s consensus can run in n time rather than n^2 is BLS signature aggregation. The attacks in the paper however aren’t attacks on signature aggregation. So I don’t think your argument is valid."

> mathematically provable binary consensus algorithms known in this universe have n^2 behavior

Is there a convenient way for an uneducated schmuck like me to read up on this? Just a comment without references isn't much to go on.