Vulnerability found in Babylon staking code could slow block production

15 hours ago

A recently disclosed bundle flaw successful the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon could let malicious validators to disrupt parts of the network’s statement process, perchance slowing artifact accumulation during cardinal periods, according to developers.

The vulnerability affects Babylon’s artifact signature scheme, known arsenic the BLS ballot extension, which is utilized to beryllium that validators person agreed connected a block

The bug enables malicious validators to intentionally omit the artifact hash tract erstwhile sending their ballot extension, which could pb to validator statement issues during the epoch boundaries of the network, according to a GitHub post published connected Thursday.

The artifact hash tract tells validators which blocks they are really voting for during the statement process, a tract that the bug allows to beryllium intentionally omitted.

Through the recently discovered vulnerability, a malicious validator could theoretically clang different validators during cardinal statement checks during epoch boundaries, perchance starring to a slowdown successful artifact accumulation if aggregate validators are affected.

“Intermittent validator crashes astatine epoch boundaries, which would dilatory down the instauration of the epoch bound block,” wrote pseudonymous contributor GrumpyLaurie55348, who discovered the vulnerability. “Babylon past dereferences this nil pointer successful consensus-critical codification paths (notably VerifyVoteExtension, and besides proposal-time ballot verification), causing a runtime panic,” they added.

Cointelegraph has reached retired to Babylon for remark connected the imaginable interaction and resolutions to the vulnerability, but had not received a effect by publication.

The bug has not been described arsenic actively exploited, but developers warned it could beryllium abused if near unresolved.

Babylon continues expanding Bitcoin’s yield-bearing capabilities

Babylon was seen arsenic a important accidental for Bitcoin-based decentralized finance, acknowledgment to introducing Bitcoin-native staking for the archetypal clip in crypto history.

Bitcoin-based decentralized concern (DeFi), besides known arsenic BTCFi, is simply a caller technological paradigm that aims to bring DeFi capabilities to the world’s archetypal blockchain network, enabled by the instauration of the Runes protocol during the 2024 Bitcoin halving.

On Wednesday, Babylon received $15 million successful backing from a16z Crypto done the merchantability of Babylon's autochthonal BABY (BABY) tokens to the integer plus limb of Andreessen Horowitz.

The backing volition enactment the continued improvement of Bitcoin-native DeFi infrastructure, said a16z Crypto successful a blog post published Wednesday.

Earlier successful December, Babylon partnered with Aave Labs to bring Bitcoin-backed lending to Aave v4, enabling BTC to beryllium utilized arsenic collateral without wrappers oregon custodians. The merchandise is expected to participate its investigating signifier successful the archetypal 4th of 2026, with a associated motorboat acceptable for April 2026.