Pivotal updates for Ethereum 2.0 have been slow, but steady. Although technical problems continue to plague the network (something that has been going on for more than two years), researchers now have three scenarios showing how Ethereum 2.0’s proof of-stake (PoS ) design can still be attacked. They can also be fixed, but don’t panic.

Serious Attacks against Ethereum’s PoS Design

The world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency, Ethereum (ETH), has managed to notch another ATH in the early hours of Wednesday after last week’s successful completion of the 2.0 Altair Beacon Chain update.

A group of researchers had earlier identified three potential scenarios of how the design for the new consensus mechanism could be compromised. However, Danny Ryan, Ethereum Foundation’s director of research, is positive that “The Merge”, and the solution, will be implemented before Ethereum’s next upgrade.

According to Ryan, there are two simple fixes that have been proposed to the fork choice – “proposer boosting” and “proposer view synchronization.”

Formally analysed by Stanford researchers, the first solution – proposer boosting – has been “specified” since April this. The fix was also implemented in at most one client.

The second solution, the proposer view synchroization, is still in the early stages of formal analysis, but researchers are optimistic about it. Researchers are currently using this method to address all three attacks due to simplicity and maturity of analysis. This means that the Ethereum Foundation developers will implement the fix before the transition’s decisive phase begins.

No Hard fork

Ryan assured the community in a blog post that the Merge upgrade would be deployed on time. Ryan also stated that the Merge upgrade will not be delayed in any way.

“This fix targets only the fork choice and is therefore congruous with the Merge specs as written today. Under normal conditions, the fork choice is the exact same as it is now, but in the event of attack scenarios, the fixed version helps provide chain stability.”

ETH developers and researchers believe that proposer boosting, the first suggested fix, will be formally integrated into the consensus specifications by November. In that way, it will be live on the Merge testnets by mid-January 2022.