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According to a new analysis, a solution implemented to guard against so-called 51% attacks on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network may not be as secure as other alternatives.
This summer, ETC’s blockchain suffered three such attacks in one month. Soon after, ETC Labs – a leading network support organization – announced that it would implement Modified Exponential Subjective Scoring (MESS) as an “innovative, low-risk” means of mitigating the risk of future attacks by 51%.
But, according to a report from ETC Cooperative and developer Cardano IOHK on Tuesday, an analysis concluded that “the ‘MESS’ solution will not provide” solid security “and there is” no guarantee that further attacks will not succeed. “
Additionally, MESS does not provide “high security for stakeholders to reduce confirmation times to desirable levels,” the report reads.
A 51% attack occurs when an evil actor gains most of a network’s computing power, allowing them to reorganize blocks on the chain and potentially double-spend transactions.
MESS is designed to make large block reorgs up to 31x more expensive, theoretically nullifying any profit motives behind 51% attacks.
The companies looked at various solutions proposed by developer teams across the ETC community for analysis and said the checkpoint and timestamp solutions would provide superior security.
According to the report, the timestamp allows ETC to base its security on another secure blockchain such as Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, the checkpoint occurs when a “trusted authority” chooses a block to become the canonical chain that all participants must follow and cannot subsequently be “deleted or restored”.
ETC Co-op Executive Director Bob Summerwill said he hopes the report is the “first step” towards decentralized decision making among ETC executives, “allowing technical and other ecosystem proposals to be essentially peer reviewed,” improving them and ensuring they are solid. “
The report also suggested the implementation of a “decentralized treasury”, providing a continuous source of funding for the future development of the ETC platform.
“A democratic and transparent funding mechanism will also allow the ETC community to determine its future direction, allowing it to choose which innovations to incorporate into the ETC product offering,” it reads.
This, the report says, would ultimately allow ETC to “keep up with and surpass the capabilities of other platforms.”
