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Security Improvements

Improve the security of the Ethereum protocol

Overview

This theme covers our work on improving the security of Ethereum's consensus protocol along three complementary lines: formal analysis of in-flight EIPs, protocol-level changes that strengthen the guarantees the chain provides, and formal verification of consensus specifications.

Why it matters

The consensus protocol secures tens of billions of dollars of value; its guarantees should be stated precisely, checked mechanically, and strengthened where the current design falls short. Reviewing EIPs before they ship catches gaps early. Verifying specifications guards against drift between intended behavior and deployed code. And where new protocol properties can be added — accountable safety being one example — that work belongs here too.

Publications

Open Problems

Accountable Liveness for Simplex-style protocols

How can Simplex-style protocols attribute liveness failures and resume finalizing?

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Benchmarking and testing

How can we rigorously benchmark and test consensus protocol implementations, including the interactions between their components, at scale?

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Reconfiguration

How can we safely reconfigure consensus protocol parameters (validator sets, thresholds, timing) without disrupting safety or liveness?

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Enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS) security analysis

Can a precise formal description of the ePBS (EIP-7732) protocol be extracted from the spec, and does it satisfy its intended security properties?

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