A vulnerability has been found in the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon that could allow a malicious validator to disrupt the consensus process by omitting the block hash field, Cointelegraph reported on Jan. 9.
The defect occurred in Babylon’s BLS vote extension. Cointelegraph reported that if the block hash is missing, it could trigger conflicts among validators and delay block production.
An anonymous contributor who discovered the flaw, GrumpyLaurie55348, warned, “If validators conflict, block creation speed can slow,” adding, “This error occurs in a code path critical to consensus and triggers a panic on execution.”
No cases of the vulnerability being exploited have been confirmed so far, but developers said a quick fix is needed.
Babylon recently raised $15 million in investment through a16z Crypto as it accelerates expansion of Bitcoin-based decentralised finance, or DeFi.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr