Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Input Output, the developer behind Cardano, has announced a big security upgrade called “Ouroboros Phalanx”.
The update, which is in the last stage of testing, is intended to solve grinding attacks.
One of the main proof-of-stake blockchains will also see an increase in efficiency after implementing the update.
How grinding attacks work
The network randomly chooses who can get the best block. However, if someone controls a large amount of ADA tokens (more than 20%, for example), he could end up rigging randomness.
This could be achieved by quickly testing different “random seeds” to ensure the largest number of winning slots. Nefarious actors could end up delaying transactions, censoring blocks, or double spending.
New cryptographic puzzle
Phalanx makes it much harder to perform those grinding attacks, which are considered the most dangerous class of PoS attacks, by adding a verifiable delay feature (VDF).
The cryptographic puzzle takes real time and computational effort to solve, meaning there will be no shortcuts.
Therefore, bad actors will no longer be able to “grind” through random possibilities instantly: each attempt now needs to do a real heavy calculation. With the new update, attackers cannot easily manipulate the randomness of boss selection.
In particular, the randomness that decides who produces blocks now evolves in two epochs (about 10 days).
In addition to providing a higher level of security, the update will also ensure faster transactions and much better decentralization.
Phalanx will be launched via a hard fork since core protocol changes cannot be implemented with a simple parameter tweak.
