The Ethereum consensus layer client Prism team has published a detailed analytical report on the issue that occurred in the Fosaka mainnet. During the incident, nearly all Prism nodes experienced resource exhaustion while processing specific proofs, resulting in delayed responses to validators’ requests. This problem arose between epochs 411439 and 411480, causing the loss of 248 blocks over 42 epochs and a block missing rate of 18.5 percent. Network participation dropped to 75 percent, and validators suffered a combined loss of approximately 382 Ethereum in proof rewards.
The root cause was that Prism beacon nodes received proofs that were potentially inconsistent, referencing block roots from previous rounds. To verify these proofs, Prism attempted to reconstruct a consistent state, leading to repeated processing of past round blocks and costly recalculations of round convergences. This severely impacted node resources and system performance.
As an immediate remedy, users were advised to use the –disable-last-epoch-target parameter to mitigate the issue’s effects. The Prism team plans to implement a permanent fix in upcoming versions 7.1 and 7.1.0.
Ethereum is a widely used blockchain platform hosting smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). Prism is a key client operating at the consensus layer, ensuring block validity and network security. Technical issues like this can affect network integrity and validator confidence, making prompt resolution essential. Future updates to Prism are expected to reduce the likelihood of similar problems and enhance network stability, thereby fostering growth and trust within the Ethereum community.
Source: binance
