The BitMEX research department of the cryptocurrency exchange in its blog published information that its full site Ethereum Parity contains a “potential error”.
The alleged error was discovered when analyzing data from Nodestats.org, the new BitMEX Research website for collecting key metrics on Ethereum nodes. In the same blog post, the exchange announced the launch of the Nodestats service, which it created in collaboration with TokenAnalyst.
Nodestats shows key data for Ethereum Parity and Ethereum Geth clients and compares the requirements related to CPU, RAM, bandwidth and storage.
The team began collecting data from the full Ethereum Parity node on March 1, subsequently reporting that the node was still not fully synchronized with the Ethereum blockchain. According to the study, the client fell behind by 450,000 blocks, noting that "based on his current work, he should catch up with the main chain in a few days."
However, according to the researchers, slow synchronization is currently not a problem for the network:
"Although slow synchronization is a potential problem, the Ethereum network has not yet reached a point where the node cannot catch up with it, because the synchronization speed is faster than the growth rate of the blockchain."
However, BitMEX Research revealed a "potential error" in the client, saying that the Parity node "sometimes reports that it is synchronized, even though it is several hundred thousand blocks up to this point."
The authors argue that the alleged error can be used by the attacker in some circumstances, but argues that this is "extremely unlikely":
“It can be argued that the impact of this potential error can be [...] serious if the attacker uses it correctly. For example, a user may accept an incoming payment or the execution of a smart contract as verified, while his site declares that he is at the forefront of the network chain. [...] An attacker would need to double the costs, which may have less PoW evidence than the “tip” of the main chain. Although the successful implementation of this attack is extremely unlikely, and users in any case are unlikely to use the highest visible blocking function. "
Currently, Nodestats is connected to five different Ethereum nodes and collects data every five seconds. According to a BitMEX blog post, the main goal of the project is to provide metrics related to the computing resources that each Ethereum node requires.
It seems to us that the BitMEX Research team made this news specifically for the launch of its project in order to attract more attention.
