Ethereum sees 25% validation drop post-Fusaka as Prysm bug nears finality loss
A Prysm client bug caused a 25% drop in Ethereum validator participation shortly after the Fusaka upgrade, nearly jeopardizing network finality.Summary
Following the Fusaka network upgrade, Ethereum experienced a significant drop in validator participation, with voting participation falling by about 25% to 74.7% at one point, due to a bug in the Prysm consensus client version v7.0.0. This bug caused nodes to process outdated attestations, preventing correct functioning. Developers issued a temporary fix using the “--disable-last-epoch-targets” flag. The participation drop closely mirrored the share of validators using Prysm (which fell from 22.71% to 18%), suggesting the issue was concentrated there. While participation has since recovered to nearly 99%, the incident highlighted the risk of losing finality if voting participation drops below the two-thirds supermajority threshold, which could freeze L2 bridges and pause withdrawals. The event underscores the ongoing concern regarding insufficient client diversity, as Lighthouse now accounts for 52.55% of nodes, meaning a similar bug in Lighthouse could halt finality.
(Source：Cointelegraph)