How long non-finality could kill Ethereum by Dapplion | Devcon SEA

Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 12:00 AM

After the merge, Ethereum has a finality gadget to provide an economic assurance that transactions will never be reverted. When 2/3 of the validator set are online and agree, we finalize. Otherwise, we enter a period of non-finality which can be very long, up to a few weeks. Long non-finality has never happened in Ethereum's history and could trigger a cascade of failures that will kill liveness. How can we harden the network against this? How high are the stakes? Speaker(s): Dapplion Skill level: Intermediate Track: Core Protocol Keywords: Consensus, Decentralization, Security Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum, https://warpcast.com/devcon Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/ Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on Swarm, IPFS and more. Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024. Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/