Ethereum Network will be switching from its current PoW(Proof-Of-Work) system to new PoS(Proof-Of-Stake) Mechanism on 15^th September, 2022. It is perhaps a momentous event that entire blockchain space has been waiting for long. As the day of merge draws close news, prediction about the Merge also seems to be coming in thick and fast.

In an interview, anonymous blockchain developer and security researcher stated that if validators are able to line up two consecutive blocks to validate, then an exploit may take place in block n and can be finished in block n+1 on the post Merge Ethereum Network (Recently Heard). The price manipulation in between won’t be fixed, and an arbitrage bot will not come in.

Since PoS mechanism of the Ethereum permits the node validators to plan attacks, that inform the validator in advance of the blocks they will validate, thus making the PoS mechanism of the Ethereum different from PoW mechanism. However, similar thing is possible in PoW mechanism, but the likelihood of validating two blocks by the miner validating is very low. Thus, they cannot plan any attack in advance.

Proof of Stake Vs Proof of Work:

In a PoW system, to create a cryptocurrency a single miner requires more than 50% of the total network’s mining power, thus making it highly time consuming and costly to gain control of the network. To tackle this a layer of social consensus makes a developed PoW system like Bitcoin that is impossible to attack by permitting other network nodes to identify such an attack and potentially fork away from malicious miners.

Similarly, validators in PoS systems produce blocks proportional to the number of tokens they own when they validate transactions on the blockchain. But the significant feature of PoS will be that it will secure the network at very cheaper prices that increases the likelihood of the attacks by hackers.

To conclude, the implementation of attacks will be comparatively easier on the PoS network, thus making PoW mechanism of Ethereum much secure. However, it does not mean that Ethereum will have poor security mechanism, on practical level, PoS is still safe. The developers are working on the issue of the consecutive blocks, once fixed, it won’t be easy to hack.