HomeCryptoEthereumEthereum: a bug on the blockchain causes it to split in two

Ethereum: a bug on the blockchain causes it to split in two

In recent days, Ethereum‘s blockchain has split in two. 

The problem is complex, and although the solution already exists, it cannot yet be said to be completely solved. 

The issue concerns the most popular client for managing an Ethereum node, namely Geth. There are currently 3,988 synchronized nodes on the Ethereum network, of which 2,886 (72%) use this client. 

The fact is that the old versions of Geth contained a bug that was exploited by some malicious parties to create a second modified chain. 

In fact, although the Geth development team had known about the bug for some time, they had published the corrected version of the software on 24 August, namely 1.10.8. 

Unfortunately, however, despite the fact that the announcement of the launch of the new version explicitly stated that it contained a hotfix for a very serious security problem, only 30% of nodes initially updated their client to the new version. 

Ethereum nodes

Currently, only 62% of the 2,895 Ethereum nodes using Geth have updated to the latest version, leaving 1,089 nodes exposed to the attack. This is 27% of the total synchronized nodes in the Ethereum network. 

Although Geth’s development team has never publicly disclosed the nature of the bug, in order to prevent it from being easily exploited, after the 18 August announcement some malicious parties found it and exploited it to prevent nodes using the old version of the client from adding blocks. 

However, since the Ethereum protocol considers the longest chain to be reliable in chain-split cases such as this, and since 73% of nodes are now unaffected by the bug, the network continued to function, so that users of ETH and the various ERC-20 tokens did not really notice. 

Moreover, at the time of the exploit, most ETH miners were already using clients not affected by the bug, so most of the hash power continued to operate on the correct chain. However, initially some powerful miners, including BTC.com, Binance and Flexpool, were continuing to use old versions of Geth, but once they were contacted by the Geth team and alerted to the serious problem, they updated their clients, effectively making the bulk of the problem go away. 

Finally, it is worth remembering that nowadays the vast majority of wallets do not download and verify the entire blockchain, partially due to the fact that Ethereum’s blockchain weighs 345 GB, but rely on the data it acquires from a certain number of nodes. In theory, all nodes should have the exact same blockchain stored, so it is only in the event of a split that there could be problems. However, since the vast majority of nodes are no longer affected by the problem, Ethereum wallets function correctly. 

What to do about this bug

Whoever owns and operates a node in any decentralized, permissionless network has no obligation or duty to keep the software up to date. This means that in cases like this, it is simply a matter of hoping that as many nodes as possible will be updated, and even if a warning is given in advance, there is not always an immediate response, even if the problem is serious. 

Usually, however, in such cases it is sufficient to wait for as many node managers as possible to acknowledge the problem and update. 

https://twitter.com/AndreCronjeTech/status/1431259003150012419

Marco Cavicchioli
Marco Cavicchioli
Born in 1975, Marco has been the first to talk about Bitcoin on YouTube in Italy. He founded ilBitcoin.news and the Facebook group" Bitcoin Italia (open and without scam) ".
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