ETC Labs has unveiled an action plan to protect the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network against future 51% attacks, weeks after the network was hit with two attacks that saw hackers steal millions of dollars worth of Etc.
According to a Medium post from the organization, it is investing more resources, both human and financial, to “enhance security, strengthen the network, and ensure a bright future for ETC.” Its security plan consists of immediate actions to take, and long-term proposal that will require community consensus.
ETC Labs’ proposed immediate actions include a defensive mining operation through cooperating with miners and mining pools to maintain the network’s hashrate stable and increase it when necessary, It also proposed enhanced network monitoring to identify anomalies and hashrate spikes, as well as mining pool prices and inventory.
It also plans to coordinate with cryptoasset exchanges to whitelist addresses and set safe deposit and withdrawal confirmation times. It will also implement a “Permapoint” finality arbitration system to inhibit chain reorganizations while maintaining consensus.
ETC Labs’ long-term fixes, which require community consensus, include using features to increase resistance against 51% attacks, including check-pointing and PirlGuard, which can be implemented through a hard fork in approximately three months.
Under discussion will also be changing Ethereum Classic’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm. Two alternatives are being considered:
The two alternatives under consideration are Keccak-256, or RandomX. These could be implemented through a hard fork in approximately 6 months, provided that testing is completed successfully
As Ethereum Classic is using the same hashing algorithm as Ethereum (ETH), it’s a minority chain in terms of hashrate and can be exploited thanks to all of the additional hashrate that can be rented from miners who mine ETH.
The firm notes that switching to RandomX, which was developed by the Monero community, could not solve the problem, as it would move from Ethereum’s shadow to the shadow of Monero, while still being a minority chain.
ETC Labs also suggested the introduction of a treasury system to the blockchain could be beneficial.
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