Proof-of-Stake Ethereum Emulation Platform For Analyzing Network Level Consensus Layer Attacks

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity recently as a monetary system with trillions of United States dollars entrusted to them. Thus, ensuring their security from attackers is crucial. In the past, the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization used the well studied Proof-of-Work (PoW) as their consensus protocol, but many have critiqued its unsustainable energy consumption. On September 15, 2022 the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, switched to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus protocol with enormous energy savings, but the complexity of Proof-of-Stake in combination with Ethereum's features makes it difficult to study its security guarantees. Ethereum has since updated further to patch vulnerabilities and add even more features. In this fast paced evolution, tools to analyze Ethereum, in its full complexity, under attack are necessary. We present an Ethereum emulation and controller platform that enables analysis of attacks at the network level on the latest industry standard clients. We use these tools to emulate network delay and partitioning attacks on Ethereum and successfully visualize their measured effects on consensus. Our results point to this platform being useful for further research with attacks at the protocol and application layers, particularly those that use the network as an attack vector.