Ethereum Reorgs "Extremely Unlikely" After POS Merge: Research Paper

[RSRS]

A new research paper by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and blockchain researcher Georgios Konstantopoulos suggests that after “the Merge” or when Ethereum shifts from Proof of Work (POW) to Proof of Stake (POS), the recently discussed possibility of miners running custom clients (with existence not established with certainty) to accept bribes to execute Ethereum reorgs and extract harmful MEV would become “extremely unlikely”.

During the last few weeks there has been a lot of discussion around the possibility of miners running custom software that accepts bribes to reorg the chain.@gakonst and I explain how this will become harder after the proof of stake merge:https://t.co/ghwikceVBr

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 20, 2021
The paper titled “Ethereum Reorgs After The Merge” published on July 20 describes the various “finality” parameters for different consensus mechanisms, highlights the danger of Ethereum reorgs, delves into the miner’s likelihood of doing that, explains why the Merge is the preferred solution and complete activation of Proof of Stake (POS) is the block-chain’s best bet to combat such issues.

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Ethereum and Bitcoin rely on the “longest chain” to define the fork choice rule – the determination of the chain to follow when multiple valid chains exist. Any reorg means that a block which was previously part of the chain is discarded in favor of a competing block. Now, short reorgs are common in Proof of Work (POW) consensus mechanism and typically arise from latency – that is different participants in the network see different valid blocks at the same time and have to define the valid one.

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