The Black Swan Event That Could Cause a Fork in Ethereum (Again) - Ep. 600
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This week a major potential risk to Ethereum was highlighted by a bug that surfaced in Nethermind, a minority execution client. While the bug was fixed quickly, it raised the question of what would happen to the blockchain if Geth, which is used by more than two-thirds of validators and so is considered a “supermajority client,” had a bug. The situation could potentially result in a catastrophic fork of Ethereum.
Ethereum developer Lefteris Karapetsas joined Unchained to discuss the different scenarios of what could happen, the potential impact of a supermajority client issue on staking services such as Lido, why he feels the incentive system is poorly designed, and what other solutions are out there to address the lack of client diversity.
Show highlights:
What a consensus issue is in Ethereum and what happened with Nethermind last weekend
Why it would be a big problem if a supermajority client had a bug
The potential impact on staking services such as Lido
Why Lefteris feels like he is reliving the historic Ethereum DAO hack all over again
Whether the largest entities running nodes will start pursuing client diversity
How the data on the prevalence of specific Ethereum execution clients is not verifiable or programmatic, making it less transparent and difficult to analyze
Why Lefteris believes that the incentive system is not designed to achieve client diversity
Whether there are developments in the works to try to solve the lack of client diversity
Thank you to our sponsors!
Popcorn Network
iTrustCapital
Guest
Lefteris Karapetsas, Founder of Rotkiapp
Previous appearance on Unchained: Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree
Links
Unchained:
Most Ethereum Staking Pools Are Using Just One Execution Client, Potentially Increasing Risks to the Network
The Chopping Block: Data Availability & Why It’s Important
CoinDesk: Bug That Took Down 8% of Ethereum's Validators Sparks Worries About Even Bigger Outage
The Defiant: Ethereum Software Client Centralization Sparks Concern
Crypto.news: Nethermind rolls out urgent fix for block processing bug in Ethereum client
Lukasz Rosmej’s tweet that minority client Nethermind had a consensus issue
Lefteris’ tweet on a supermajority Ethereum client bug
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's tweet on what he’d do in a censorship resistance request scenario
Run the majority client at your own peril! by Dankrad Feist
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Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree - Ep.325
During my research for The Cryptopians, I found information that I believe identifies the perpetrator behind The DAO hack on Ethereum. Three founding members of The DAO and Slock.it (Christoph Jentzsch, Lefteris Karapetsas, Griff Green) discuss how and why they created The DAO, how they helped save the funds being siphoned off by black hat hackers, their personal feelings about The DAO, along with their reaction to the news about who I believe was The DAO attacker. Show topics:
Part 1: Background on The DAO
Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s background and how they came to Slock.it
what Slock.it was and why the Slock.it team decided to create The DAO
what The DAO has to do with venture capital funding
why the Slock.it team did not cap The DAO sale
what made The DAO such a popular investment vehicle
why The DAO developers were scared at the amount of money they raised
Part 2:
what Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s initial reaction to The DAO was
saving funds from The DAO via a hard fork versus white hat hacking
whether they thought Ethereum Classic would survive a hard fork
how the Ethereum community has treated Christoph, Griff, and Lefteris in the wake of The DAO attack
Part 3:
why they disagree on whether code is law
their reaction to my naming Toby Hoenisch as The DAO attacker
which actor would play them in a movie about The DAO attack
Come to My In-Person Book Signings and Events!
New York:
Wednesday, March 2, at 7pm
At The Strand Bookstore
Moderated by CoinDesk’s Christine Lee
https://www.strandbooks.com/events/event403?title=laura_shin_the_cryptopians_idealism_greed_lies_and_the_making_of_the_first_big_cryptocurrency_craze
Bay Area:
Tuesday March 8, 6pm
San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club
Moderated by The Information’s Kate Clark
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2022-03-08/laura-shin-inside-first-cryptocurrency-craze
Seattle:
Wednesday March 9, at 7:30pm
The Forum
Moderated by Steve Scher, of Town Hall Seattle.
https://townhallseattle.org/event/laura-shin/
Thank you to our sponsors!
Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021
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Cross River Bank: https://crossriver.com/crypto
Episode Links
Guests
Christoph Jentzsch
https://twitter.com/ChrJentzsch
Griff Green
https://twitter.com/thegrifft
Lefteris Karapetsas
https://mobile.twitter.com/LefterisJP
DAO Hacker Reveal:
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2022/02/22/exclusive-austrian-programmer-and-ex-crypto-ceo-likely-stole-11-billion-of-ether/
Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/exclusive-cryptos-biggest-whodunnit-who-was-behind-the-2016-dao-attack-on-ethereum/
Medium: https://medium.com/@laurashin/who-hacked-the-dao-on-ethereum-heres-how-we-jumped-past-one-critical-step-60aec489a127
Bulletin: https://laurashin.bulletin.com/who-was-behind-the-2016-dao-attack-on-ethereum-the-backstory-to-my-investigation
Forbes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuICbAucfn0
Daily Tech News Show: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1306972988
The Cryptopians
http://bit.ly/cryptopians
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cryptopians-Idealism-Greed-Making-Cryptocurrency/dp/1541763017/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1645037311&sr=8-2
On Barnes. &. Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cryptopians-laura-shin/1138980345?ean=9781541763012
On Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/the-cryptopians-idealism-greed-lies-and-the-making-of-the-first-big-cryptocurrency-craze/9781541763012
Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-writing-the-cryptopians-shaped-my-views-on-ethereum/
The DAO Hack
https://www.coindesk.com/learn/2016/06/25/understanding-the-dao-attack/
https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao
https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-matthew-leising-confronted-his-suspects-in-the-dao-attacks/
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