Experts agree that delayed finality poses limited risk unless incorrect blocks are finalized
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the network can tolerate temporary loss of finality without facing meaningful security threats, even aftter a recent bug in the Prysm client caused a brief disruption in the blockchain’s confirmation process. In a recent post Buterin noted that there is “nothing wrong with losing finalization once in a while”emphasizing that delays are acceptable as long as the protocol does not finalize an incorrect block.
Finality represents a point where the network becomes certain a block will not be reverted. According to Buterin, if finality is delayed for hours due to a major issue, “that’s fine,” because the chain continues to operate normally during the disruption. The critical failure to avoid, he said, is finalizing the wrong block, which could undermine trust in the protocol.
Experts agree with this assessment. Fabrizio Romano Genovese, an Ethereum protocol specialist, highlighted that during a loss of finality, Ethereum temporarily behaves more like Bitcoin, which has operated with probabilistic finality since 2009. He explained that Ethereum’s design includes a deterministic mechanism where blocks become “justified” once they receive over 66% of validator votes, and “finalized” after two full epochs.
Genovese noted that similar incidents occurred in May 2023, and that they do not compromise chain security they merely revert guarantees back to probabilistic levels for a short time.
The impact, however, is more noticeable for systems that rely on deterministic finality. Polygon representatives said transfers from Ethereum may be delaye but stressed that “there is no scenario in which users experience a rollback or message invalidation.” Infrastructure such as L2 settlement layers will simply wait for finality to resume.
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