- A recent ETH 2.0 specifications audit pointed out two areas of potential security vulnerabilities.
- This included the protocol’s peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging system and the block proposer system.
- Vitalik Buterin assured that the issues would be resolved and the multiclient testnets will go live in April.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has said that ETH 2.0 team will likely go ahead with multiclient testnets in April. Least Authority, a tech security firm, recently audited the ETH 2.0 specifications. It had highlighted two areas with potential security vulnerabilities – the protocol’s peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging system and the block proposer system. In response to the audit report, Buterin said that the team is currently working to resolve the issues. However, he noted that it might require long-term efforts rather than immediate revisions.
The auditors raised concerns about the spam issue in the protocol’s P2P messaging system. They suggested the implementation of a fully BAR-resilient gossip protocol to reduce malicious spamming. To this, Buterin said that the same problem persisted in ETH 1.0 framework as well and was mitigated over time. He expects the same to take place in ETH 2.0.
Buterin said:
In general, we definitely take network security anti-spam seriously. Eth1 has taken some time to harden its network layer and there are currently a lot of eyes on networking issues so I expect DoS issues to be mitigated over time.
Regarding BAR resiliency, I expect that the approach we’ll take will be to assume altruism at the beginning and then build in better incentive properties over time; the eth1 networking is also evolving in this direction.
The second issue pointed out in the report concerns potential data leaks with ETH 2.0’s block proposer system. Buterin said that the team is considering Least Authority’s recommendation of using a Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) mechanism to conceal the selection process. SSLE is included in Buterin’s 5-10 year roadmap for ETH 2.0 and will be implemented in Phase 2 or later.
ETH 2.0 project lead Danny Ryan claimed that now that the audit is completed, the next stages are to carry out multi-client testnets and a Phase 0 bug bounty program. As per The Block, Buterin said that the major push for multiclient testnets is expected to occur in April.
The best way to think about when phase 0 mainnet launch will take place is, first we need a multiclient test net, then we wait for that testnet to run for some time without issues, and if it does then we launch. This is a similar procedure to what we did back in 2015 for eth1.
So it is not easy to predict when mainnet will happen, though we absolutely expect multiclient test nets very soon; April seems very likely.
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