The Ethereum network has experienced a fork or breakdown of the decentralized consensus, causing there are currently two independent blockchains in operation.
A bug or error in the Geth client, the main software used in Ethereum nodes, would have been exploited today, August 27, 2021 at this network address, according to an investigation by The Block Research.
Likewise, said media indicates that the bug was also exploited in lBinance Smart Chain (BSC) and Huobi ECO Chain, blockchains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ethereum’s virtual computer.
Ethereum’s main security developer, Martin Swende, confirmed on Twitter the morning of August 27, the breakdown of the decentralized consensus on the network.
“A fork of the chain took place on the main Ethereum network. The incident was resolved in the previously announced v1.10.8. Please update your node, if you haven’t already! ”He said this morning.
The developer further stated that luckily most Ethereum miners would have updated the software in a timely manner, so that the new blockchain is still the longest chain, a principle that is often applied to confirm the validity of a blockchain and the consensus around it.
However, just over 1 hour ago, Tim Beiko, one of Ethereum’s main developers, assured that mining pools BTC.com, FlexPool and Binance Pool, still continued to mine the old chain. Beiko stated that they would be contacting the operators of this pool to notify them about the software update.
If you have an Ethereum node, update as soon as possible
From Geth’s official Twitter account, they urged to run the new update for this client, but not all nodes have been synchronized to this version, released on August 24 on GitHub.
The new version, Geth v1.10.8, deprecated v1.10.7, which would present a serious flaw in its operation, which was not disclosed to avoid security incidents. The bug was found by the Telos project on August 18, who notified the Ethereum team, according to a press release.
According to the Ethernodes.org website, 74.6% of all nodes on the Ethereum network run the Geth client, of which, only 28% have been updated to the new version.
Of the 5,300 Ethereum nodes, 3,955 nodes are from the Geth client, but of these, only 1,123 operate with v1.10.8, an apparently secure version of the software. This follows in that only 21% of Ethereum nodes are operating with updated software (Geth v1.10.8).
Only 28.5 percent of the nodes using the Geth client are updated to the latest version.
Source: Ethernodes.org.
Strong forks are extremely dangerous, as users could end up spending their coins on both chains when making a transaction.
Clearly, this involves timing and performance issues that can leave users with large monetary losses, including the entire industry and platforms that run on Ethereum smart contracts.
This problem occurs in the same month that the London hard fork came into effect, which in that case was controlled and planned, as reported by CriptoNoticias. However, commission rates have not dropped so far, as many users expected with the new monetary scheme introduced, which could have positive effects on rates, but in the long term.