Protecting The Baselayer - from Shanghai to Osaka
Duration: 00:21:22
Speaker: Martin Holst Swende
Type: Talk
Expertise: Intermediate
Event: Devcon
Date: Jul 2026
Most people know that Ethereum runs smart contracts and move ether around. However, "Ethereum Security" involves a lot more than only smart contracts, mining difficulty and managing private keys. This is a talk about the base layer security. There is a peer-to-peer stack, with it's own separate discovery protocol and p2p protocol, which can be used for eclipse-, DoS- and amplification attacks. There's a consensus engine which encompasses a lot more than only the EVM. In this talk, Martin Holst Swende will talk about vulnerabilities, attacks and hotpatching the mainnet -- lesser known incidents, hiccups and close-calls that have occurred on the road from Shanghai (Devcon2) to Osaka (Devcon5).
