The post Vitalik Buterin hails Ethereum for this big upgrade, details here appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Vitalik Buterin has praised Ethereum for hitting key milestone in the execution layer client diversity.  Ethereum plans to have multiple execution clients to work in parallel while verifying blocks.  Ethereum [ETH] has achieved a key milestone by limiting top execution clients run by validators from having a supermajority market share. Reacting to the update, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin termed it the ‘robustness’ of the ecosystem.  ‘No execution client has more than 2/3 market share. Great news for the robustness of the Ethereum L1.’  Source: X/Vitalik Buterin The problem with ETH supermajority client risk For context, validators running staking and pools use Ethereum execution client software. A dominant execution client, i.e., the one used by most validators, more than 2/3 of market share, is considered a supermajority client and carries a risk to the entire ecosystem.  According to the Supermajority tracker, a supermajority client could cause a network split and even fund loss in case of bugs.  ‘It has the capability to finalize the chain without the agreement of the other clients. A consensus bug within such a client would cause catastrophic results, such as a network split, loss of funds, and reputation damage.’ Additionally, the supermajority client could lead to consensus errors and mistakes from validators (block proposers and verifiers), which could attract severe penalties through slashing (destroying a portion of their stake/deposit).  In short, supermajority client risk translates to centralization risk which could affect the entire ecosystem. According to Ethereum’s Team Lead, Peter Szilágyi, the impact could be dire to even the chain’s adoption.  ‘Even worse, if a majority of validators are in the wrong, the bad chain can get finalized, leading to gnarly governance issues of how to recover from the error with perverse incentives from the majority validators not to. Such an event would have the capacity…

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Filed under: News - @ August 26, 2024 1:02 am