It seems like every week we are reporting on problems related to the Ethereum network. This week, Vitalik Buterin\u2019s brainchild was rocked by a critical bug that affected an estimated 54% of nodes.<\/p>\n
This is the second time in as many years that Ethereum has experienced critical bugs that caused havoc in its ecosystem. In November 2020, cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance had to stop Ethereum withdrawals after an Infura service outage.<\/p>\n
What happened with the latest Ethereum critical bug?<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s exactly what we know about this month\u2019s Ethereum bug.<\/p>\n Ethereum core developers released a patch on August 24, but it will only help those who have updated their nodes.<\/p>\n What is Tornado Cash, and why did the attackers use it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Tornado Cash is an Ethereum token designed for anonymity. It\u2019s the exact type of token that criminals and supporters of projects like Monero use and promote as part of their anarchist, anti-law agenda.<\/p>\n Systems like Tornado Cash are ideal for carrying out this sort of attack because they have been designed to \u201cbreak the on-chain link between source and destination address.\u201d That\u2019s a direct quote from the project\u2019s website.<\/p>\n Does this sound familiar? It should because it\u2019s how the Lightning Network has been designed to work with BTC. Taking transactions off-chain makes it almost impossible to track and trace funds, so it\u2019s highly unlikely that whoever exploited this Ethereum bug will face any consequences. Just like Lightning, nobody has a clue who deposits, moves, mixes, sends, or receives funds on Tornado Cash. Also, just like Lightning, it\u2019s not likely that regulators will sit back and allow this sort of system to flourish under their noses.<\/p>\n Lessons from the Ethereum network split<\/strong><\/p>\n Two important lessons can be learned from the August Ethereum network split.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t widely understood in the industry, but Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin to be an immutable evidence trail. He has explained at length how the system was specifically designed to help eliminate crime, fraud, and other social evils and how Bitcoin is the polar opposite of what anarchists and criminals wanted.<\/p>\n Perhaps the Ethereum developers should listen to Satoshi before they learn the lessons he seeks to teach the hard way?<\/p>\n A difference in reporting blockchain issues<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth pointing out how differently the so-called \u201ccrypto media\u201d has reported this critical Ethereum bug as compared to how they reported the illegal and ultimately unsuccessful attack on BSV enterprise blockchain last month.<\/p>\n It seems that the vested interests behind most major digital currency publications are handling the Ethereum split with kid gloves, and never asking the important questions such as whether it\u2019s a good idea to attempt to rebuild an aircraft mid-flight or how constantly changing the protocol might impact things down the line.<\/p>\n Yet, the same publications yelled from the rooftops that BSV had been \u201c51% attacked\u201d and almost celebrated when some exchanges temporarily halted BSV deposits and withdrawals. Virtually none of them followed up by informing their readers that no double-spend occurred and that honest nodes had successfully defended the BSV enterprise blockchain, just as Satoshi outlined in his 2008 whitepaper. It\u2019s also worth noting that following reorganization attacks, BSV went on to become the world\u2019s largest public blockchain by all major utility metrics including data storage, daily transaction volume, scaling ability and average block size.<\/p>\n These double standards should irk intellectually honest readers and cause them to wonder what is going on here. If an unsuccessful but major criminal attack is reported with near-jubilance, and a serious self-made security breach that jeopardizes an entire blockchain is reported with no critical thought or tough questions asked, can you trust anything these publications tell you?<\/p>\n\n