flâneur

What Happens After Finality in ETH2? - HackMD

hackmd.io · 1,362 words · saved by 1 readers

A fundamental property of blockchains is the notion of “finality”, which roughly means that after a certain period of time, transactions that have been included in the canonical chain are extremely difficult, or almost impossible, to revert. Eth2 has an “explicit” mechanism of chain finality enshrined within the protocol, which is different than the “probabilistic” finality found in proof of work chains such as Ethereum or Bitcoin today. In proof of work, consensus is fundamentally a global race that a lucky miner wins by being the first to produce a valid block: a result of finding a mathematical solution to a computationally difficult problem. As such, block times are probabilistic. The more blocks are added to the chain, the harder it is to revert, as each represents a cumulative sum of electrical and computational power required to create it. Given there are real, physical guarantees that would prevent an attacker from being able to revert the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains today

What Happens After Finality in ETH2? - HackMD # What Happens After Finality in ETH2? A fundamental property of blockchains is the notion of "finality," which roughly means that after a certain period of time, transactions that have been included in the canonical chain are extremely difficult or almost impossible to revert. Eth2 has an "explicit" mechanism of chain finality enshrined within the protocol, which is different from the "probabilistic" finality found in proof-of-work chains such as Ethereum or Bitcoin today. In proof of work, consensus is fundamentally a glob

related reading