Optimism fixes “fatal bug” in geth fork

Optimism has fixed a “fatal bug” in the geth fork (Ethereum’s most popular implementation). The bug was discovered and reported on February 2nd by Jay Freeman, the developer of Cydia and Orchid Protocol.

Optimism’s bug has been fixed

Large losses can be avoided with simple error detection.

Optimism, the 4th largest Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution by Total Value Locked (TVL), notification which patched a critical bug in the geth fork today (February 11th). Freeman received a reward of more than $2 million for bringing the vulnerability to Optimism’s attention.

If exploited, the vulnerability would allow ETH to be generated multiple times on optimism by “enabling the SELFDESTRUCT opcode on a contract with an ETH balance.” The SELFDESTRUCT function allows for the destruction of certain Ethereum smart contracts.

This bug has never been exploited, although it may have been accidentally triggered by an Etherscan employee. However, accidental activation will not generate “usable ETH”.

The fix for the vulnerability was tested on the Kovan testnet Optimism, and then deployed to the network’s mainnet — as well as its fork and infrastructure providers — within hours of confirmation. The network remains active at all times.

To fix the problem, Optimism developers immediately shared a private patch with “key parties”. After the patch proved successful, it was “released to the public…hidden in an unobtrusive commit.” Due to the growing number of parties in the protocol’s ecosystem, the team needs to carefully fix and release patches: various bridges, vendors, and mainnet forks. This complexity is a positive contributor to decentralization, but makes releases, particularly security releases, more difficult, the team says.

The bounty that Optimism whitehat hackers pay is based on the threat level posed by the bug. In this case, Freeman received the maximum reward.

Vitalik Buterin discussed the importance of Layer-2 for Ethereum’s future to combat the network’s high transaction fees that make the Layer-1 network “not ready for mass adoption.” Last November, Buterin introduced EIP 4488, an Ethereum Enhancement Proposal focused on reducing gas fees for Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions.

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