IOHK, the company behind the development of Cardano, is helping ETC Cooperative to find a solution to limit the risks of 51% attacks against Ethereum Classic.
Indeed, IOHK and ETC Cooperative have published a joint analysis of the proposed solutions, identifying safe alternatives to the current ones to solve the vulnerability problem of the network.
In particular, the analysis revealed some flaws in the “MESS” solution proposed by ETC Labs, while identifying the Checkpointing and Timestamping solutions as superior because of their solid and proven security.
The report also proposes a decentralized treasury solution for ETC to fund teams of independent developers to create useful solutions for the platform, increasing its appeal.
Cardano to the rescue of ETC victim of 51% attacks
ETC Cooperative is the body responsible for financially supporting the growth and development of Ethereum Classic (ETC), and is actively seeking a solution to the problems caused by 51% attacks against the network.
These attacks are creating the possibility of ETC being delisted by some exchanges, hence the efforts undertaken are important, although no effective solutions have yet been found.
Among these is ETC Labs’ “MESS”, which, however, according to the joint analysis, is not able to provide solid security to protect the network from future 51% attacks. Instead, the Checkpointing and Timestamping alternatives would provide significantly greater security, in addition to being already proven to be secure.
The Executive Director of ETC Cooperative, Bob Summerwill, said:
“ETC has a bright future, which we believe is why major stakeholders such as exchanges have shown incredible patience following previous attacks. However, if, as a community, we claim to have fixed these issues only for them to appear again in the future, this patience could run out, and we could see these shareholders cut their losses and depart from the network and the community. As a result, we can’t afford to rely on unstudied solutions. Any 51% attack mitigation must be provably robust in order to give absolute certainty to ETC holders, users, and service providers that their transactions will be secure.
“We hope this analysis, along with the proposed decentralized treasury, is the first step in a move away from centralised leadership and decision-making, to a model which uses the multitude of talented brains in the ETC ecosystem, allowing technical and other ecosystem proposals to be essentially peer reviewed, improving them and ensuring they are sound”.
The CEO of IOHK and founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, added:
“Having worked closely with the ETC community over recent years, we were well placed to both provide an open platform for developers of potential solutions to ETC’s 51% attack vulnerability to present their solutions, and to provide a concise technical assessment of all the proposed solutions. Recent weeks have illustrated the vibrant nature of the ETC community, the platform’s great potential for widespread adoption, and the community’s desire for a mechanism to attract the world’s brightest minds to opportunities to develop solutions for the platform, broadening its appeal. We believe that a treasury, to fund that innovation, is the solution to that challenge.
“We believe that challenging times call for collaboration, not competition, which is why this paper isn’t just for the ETC community, but is designed to educate the wider crypto community on how to mitigate against future attacks on other proof of work chains. The blockchain space is not only large enough to sustain collaboration, but actually needs increasing levels of collaboration in order to reach its goals of widening and democratising global access to financial services”.
