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In the letter
- A mining pool discovered a vulnerability affecting the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic blockchains.
- Some network nodes were unable to update their data due to the bug, the mining pool said.
- A solution has been implemented on both blockchains.
Mining pool 2Miners recently discovered a bug affecting the Ethereum “epoch switch”, a term for when the network moves from a series of filled blocks (called an epoch) to a new one. blog post last week. The bug also affects Ethereum Classic, a hard fork of Ethereum.
Blockchains, despite what popular culture may compare to simple spreadsheets, are highly complex mathematical structures that depend on different moving parts to function smoothly. This means that any changes, updates or new developments can lead to unforeseen consequences, which are usually explained, but can sometimes still lose the boat.
An impending fork on Ethereum Classic, the ECIP-1099 proposal, which reduces the hashing power of the network, has reportedly caused the problem this time around. 2Miners found that as the blockchain moved into its new era, mining pools were not validating the data (despite being legitimate).
2Miners later found that the bug was in the main library used to maintain both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
“With a thorough investigation, we found that the math in one of the leading libraries used in many Ethash-based cryptocurrencies is a little out of place,” the company said. He explained that the code used 32-bit computation values instead of 64-bit (the latter can store more numeric value).
The problem may have caused some nodes, individual servers that maintain the network, to accept more recent data on the blockchain, but other nodes do not, creating a potentially drastic situation that could lead to a division of the chain (similar to that of Ethereum the other day).
The developers estimated that the problem would have occurred on January 1 for the Ethereum blockchain, but it was already a problem for Ethereum Classic.
2Miners was able to identify and correct the problem for both blockchains. It worked with the developers of Ethereum Classic, who quickly installed a fix on November 6th. “Thanks for that. We’re running some synchronization tests and general health checks, but overall it looks good and if we don’t find anything unexpected we’ll have merged very soon,” said a developer before the fix was posted.
On Ethereum’s part, the mining company released two pull requests to mitigate the problem, one that the Ethereum developers installed on November 11. An Ethereum blog post published the next day encouraged users to download a patch for both of this issue along with an additional unrelated critical vulnerability. .
Ethereum has had enough week.
