ETH hits a record high, but some people found that there are three ways to attack the PoS chain

Since the Altair upgrade on the Ethereum network (Altair is part of the Ethereum network's Proof of Stake (PoS) transition plan), the price of the protocol's native cryptocurrency has hit a record high. On the evening of November 2, ETH hit a high of $4,500. However, a white paper recently submitted by computer scientists from Stanford University and the Ethereum Foundation mentioned that there are three ways to attack the Ethereum PoS chain. This paper on three ways to attack Ethereum describes the proof of stake problem through evidence.

At this stage, the Ethereum network has a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. It is expected that in the near future, the Ethereum protocol will plan to fully transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Recently, Berlin and London have carried out Altair upgrades with the aim of smoothly transitioning to a proof-of-stake network. At the same time, the average fee destroyed per Ethereum transaction has also risen sharply, soaring to $50 at one point. Not only that, last Saturday morning, the hot search on Twitter (US vertical trends) showed that the term "ETH 2.0" began to catch fire, and some of those who discussed the ETH 2.0 upgrade shared a new white paper written by computer scientists from Stanford University and the Ethereum Foundation on Twitter.
Bitcoin supporter Tuur Demeester shared the article and two quotes from it on Saturday, which theoretically analyzes how an adversary could attack the Ethereum PoS chain. The paper, titled "Three Attacks on Ethereum Proof of Stake," was published on October 19, and Tuur Demeester wrote on Twitter:
Quote from the ETH 2.0 attack paper, via @KyleLogiks:
“An adversary with 0.09% equity has a 99.6% probability of executing 1 record on any given day”
“Under adversarial network delays, an attacker only needs to control 19 validators to perform 10 reorgs” https://t.co/HGazdB0acV pic.twitter.com/MsZoyUGdev
— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) October 30, 2021 The white paper was written by Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Joachim Neu, Barnabé Monnot, Aditya Asgaonkar, Ertem Nusret Tas and David Tse. The white paper mainly reveals two recent Ethereum network attacks, and the authors stated in the white paper that they have improved the attack technology.
Improvements to the first two attack techniques would theoretically result in “short-range reorganization” and “adversarial network delays.” In addition, computer scientists have proposed a third attack method, writing:
“Combining the first two improved attack methods, we obtain a third attack method, which is to allow an adversary with very little shares and no control over network message propagation (assuming probabilistic message propagation) to trigger a remote consensus chain reorganization.”
Not only that, the white paper also adds to these three attack methods:
“Honest, rational, or ideologically motivated validators could use this attack to increase their profits or stall the protocol, threatening the incentive alignment and security of Ethereum PoS. Furthermore, the attack could cause voting processing to become unbearably congested, leading to unstable consensus.”
On the other hand, the white paper states that the attack "can also enable a priori malicious actors to completely delay consensus decisions." Meanwhile, those who do not support the Ethereum network used the paper to highlight that when the network fully transitions to a proof-of-stake system, there may be vulnerabilities related to these attacks. It is worth mentioning that Bram Cohen, founder of the Chia project and creator of Bittorrent, also tweeted about the new research on Saturday:
Some questions about ETH2 consensus "We have obtained a third attack vector that can allow even a minority stake adversary to cause a remote consensus chain reorganization" https://t.co/Vz3KG3ai1W
— Bram Cohen? (@bramcohen) October 30, 2021 A Chia supporter responded and replied to Bram Cohen:
“Let’s revisit your tweet in a year and see what Chia has achieved compared to ETH. Just know that you are now rejecting community members like me.”
The Ethereum Attack paper does provide a possible way to attack the Ethereum proof-of-stake blockchain, but it also provides solutions. The authors of the paper believe that these attack methods will tempt malicious actors.
The authors of the paper describing three possible attacks on the Ethereum proof-of-stake blockchain conclude:
"Our attack also enables a priori malicious actors (perhaps ideologically motivated) to postpone or even in some cases completely delay consensus decisions. In Section 4.2, the improved attack provides the attacker with the tools to do this, even though the attacker cannot control the message propagation delay (instead, it is assumed to be probabilistic). " (Golden Finance)