Cardano Releases Ouroboros Phalanx Upgrade

Cardano‘s developer, Input Output, has revealed Ouroboros Phalanx, a significant security enhancement.

The modification is intended to address grinding attacks and is currently undergoing testing. One of the main proof-of-stake blockchains will also witness an increase in efficiency following the adoption of the upgrade.

How the Upgrade Works

The best block is chosen at random by the network. However, someone may end up manipulating randomness if they have a significant amount of ADA tokens (for example, more than 20%). To assure the greatest number of winning slots, this might be accomplished by quickly testing various “random seeds.”

It's possible for malicious actors to double-spend, censor blocks, or postpone transactions.

Ouroboros Phalanx Brings a New Puzzle in Cryptography

By including a verifiable delay function (VDF), Ouroboros Phalanx significantly reduces the difficulty of executing those grinding attacks, which are regarded as the most deadly type of PoS attacks.

There are no shortcuts because solving the cryptographic challenge requires actual time and computational work. As a result, malicious actors will no longer be able to “grind” through random possibilities instantaneously; instead, each effort will now necessitate doing significant work. The latest update prevents attackers from manipulating the leader-selection randomness at a low cost.

Notably, the randomness that chooses who produces blocks now evolves over two epochs (about 10 days). The upgrade will provide speedier transactions and significantly improved decentralization in addition to a higher level of security. Since changes to the fundamental protocol cannot be implemented with a simple parameter change, Phalanx will be implemented through a hard fork.