Terence Chain Emphasizes Importance Of LMD-GHOST Fork Choice

Terence Chain of Prysm Ethereum Client tweeted on May 12 that they developed a newfound appreciation for blockchain liveness, particularly the LMD-GHOST fork choice, “since the incident yesterday.”

I developed a newfound appreciation for blockchain liveness (especially LMD-GHOST fork choice) since yesterday’s incident. Ethereum didn’t finalize for 3 epochs, but it kept going. Users were barely affected or noticed the finality gap.

— terence.eth (@terencechain) May 12, 2023

On May 11, the Ethereum blockchain encountered a technical problem, leading to a disruption where blocks were not being finalized for over an hour. This incident marked the second outage of this nature within the last 24 hours.

Terence Chain added that despite Ethereum not finalizing for 3 epochs, it continued to operate smoothly, and users hardly noticed or were affected by the finality gap.

Moreover, the Twitter user shared that those who relied on the finalization of the chain, such as those waiting for L1 to L2 deposits to complete, were among those affected. However concluding,

If we had chosen strong safety over liveness, the chain would have halted, and the UX would have been far worse at the time.

Friday’s incident raised significant security concerns for users of Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain in terms of market capitalization. The Ethereum Foundation stated that during periods when blocks are not being finalized, there is a potential risk of pending transactions being re-ordered or even dropped from the network.

Meanwhile, Terence Chain reported on May 13 that the network had resumed finalizing blocks. However, this was the second time within a 24-hour period that Ethereum’s performance was affected, with the same issue occurring on Thursday when finality was paused for approximately 25 minutes.

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