La Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), agenzia del Department of Defense of the United States dedicated to the development of technologies for military use, has commissioned a study to the security company Trial of Bits, which lasted one year, with the aim of certifying the degree of decentralization of the blockchain.
The results highlight some critical issues that tend to reduce the opinion that the blockchain (the studio sifted through the blockchain of Bitcoin e you Ethereum) is a completely decentralized tool.
Bitcoin
Why are cryptocurrencies collapsing
by Arcangelo Rociola
What the report says
The report, published on June 22, 2022, proposes as before critical issues the risk that blockchain participants may exercise disproportionate control. 60% of the traffic generated by the Bitcoin network passes through three Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and this opens the door to a potential vulnerability: these ISPs or the governments that control them can even prevent cryptocurrency transactions.
To this is added that about 85% of the total amount of bitcoins it is managed by less than 5% of those who own it and, in parallel, most of the nodes of the blockchain do not actively participate, moreover, one node out of 5 uses an outdated version of the Bitcoin Core client, whose vulnerabilities have been known since June 2021.
The guide
The glossary of the blockchain
by Giacomo Barbieri
The Stratum protocol, used for mining, is not encrypted and this can affect the privacy and on the confidentiality of the nodes. About half of smart contracts Ethereum they are similar to each other. This means that part of the code used to create them is reused: any programming errors run the risk of being replicated, affecting both the transactions and the trust they imply.
Speaking again of Ethereum, in August 2021, some versions of the Geth client were exploited to divide the blockchain in two, thus seriously questioning its immutability. A system really decentralized it would be less susceptible to these critical issues which, moreover, are only a part of those identified by Trial of Bits.
Beyond the alarmism, it must be taken into account that there are thousands of blockchains and that they are located in different contexts, from finance to electronic voting. However, value should be generated by creating tools that are irrefutably decentralized and as safe as possible.