Things just got MESSy for potential Ethereum Classic 51% attackers

Over the past weekend, on block 11380000, a solution for the prevention of 51% attacks was introduced to the Ethereum Classic community.

Several such attacks have recently placed ETC at a crossroads, leaving the very survival of the chain uncertain.

In the weeks that followed these attacks, the community worked to evaluate numerous potential solutions.

With most proof-of-work blockchains, the longest chain with the most work wins.

MESS disincentivizes shadow mining by weighing chains differently depending on the time of publication.

"The intention with that is to weight chains which occur and are available first over chains that come later. And so in that way, there is an incentive to publish work on the chain and it disincentivizes chains that are defined in private and that would come later."

The algorithm employs a multiplier that determines the required difficulty from a proposed chain in order to be considered canonical.

"If there is a large attack, then the miners, the operators and the nodes who have activated MESS, we certainly hope, will successfully dissuade the attacker while those nodes that haven't upgraded would move to the attacker's chain."

Although Ardis believes than no chain is immune from a 51% attack, he agreed that the only viable protection is the network's growth.

One of the bets is on Ethereum miners joining Ethereum Classic after the former migrates to the proof-of-stake consensus.