https://ift.tt/3JTND3O Buterin Shares His Views on Cross-chain Bridges

• The “honest” blocks, according to Buterin, will keep the state consistent.
• Buterin argued that a cross-chain environment was undesirable.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted a link to a Reddit article today that discusses his optimism in a multi-chain future but expresses doubts about cross-chain ecosystems. Because of the “fundamental security restrictions of bridges,” Buterin argued that a cross-chain environment was undesirable.

Buterin further said that he disagrees that all security procedures fail if and when a blockchain experiences a 51% assault. By controlling more than 50% of the network’s mining hash rate or processing power, the goal of a 51 percent attack is to influence the integrity of the transactions being logged in a blockchain. The same concept, according to Buterin, applies to any Layer 2 created on top of the Ethereum mainchain. 

Buterin wrote: 

“If Ethereum gets 51% attacked and reverts, Arbitrum, and Optimism revert too, and so “cross-rollup” applications that hold state on Arbitrum and Optimism are guaranteed to remain consistent even if Ethereum gets 51% attacked. And if Ethereum does not get 51% attacked, there’s no way to 51% attack Arbitrum and Optimism separately.”

Protocol Regulations

The attackers, according to Buterin, would be unable to propose a block that would take away someone’s ETH in the event of a 51 percent assault since doing so would break the consensus rules and be rejected by the network.

To put it another way: Even while 99 percent of hash power was oriented toward stealing from another wallet’s Ethereum, the remaining 1 percent of nodes would follow that chain since it obeys protocol regulations. As a result, the “honest” blocks, according to Buterin, will keep the state consistent.