A recent audit of the EOS platform by Chengdu LianAn Technology Co and VaaS (Verification as a Service) revealed a critical vulnerability in the smart contract platform. This bug is similar to the one found in ERC20 tokens a few days ago. We covered that in this post.
EOS Platform
The EOS platform is similar to the Ethereum blockchain. The objective is to build a decentralized operating system. The EOS team, however, wants to improve on the Ethereum blockchain by making The EOS platform more scalable and with low fees. EOS is aiming to handle millions of transactions per second using their robust platform. Ethereum is currently struggling to scale with high fees in the form of Gas.
The EOS blockchain is said to have the following properties :
Can scale to allow millions of transactions per second.
Zero fees.
Easily upgradable, allowing dApps to fix bugs with ease.
Smooth functioning of dApps with low latency.
dApps are processed in parallel to distribute the workload to save time.
The above properties of EOS will help in improving the smart contract performance while keeping fees at zero. In Short, EOS can be said to be an improved version of Ethereum in this regard. It is however still in the testnet and not out yet. Once it is on the mainnet, we can know if the platform would live up to the expectation and possibly dethrone Ethereum.
Critical Vulnerability Reported
The bug, as stated earlier, is similar to the 'batchoverflow' vulnerability that we recently noticed in several ERC20 tokens. The bug will grant the hackers unimaginable amounts of funds in the form of tokens when one tries to pass a very large number through the code.
After several ERC20 tokens were found to have this bug, LianAn tech started to investigate the EOS platform to see if the same bug exists in their smart contracts. This examination was done using overflow vulnerability detection and security verification tools. To everyone's dismay, the same vulnerability was found on the EOS platform too.
This has raised a serious questions. Is the platform a true competitor to Ethereum? Does it need more work to be able to rival Ethereum and emerge as the best smart contract platform?
EOS' marketcap has reached $18 Billion and is growing very fast even in this bear market. It is currently worth more than Elon Musk's Space X. Many investors placed their bets in this technology even though it is still in testnet. Whether the platform would meet the expectations of the investors and deliver a better product than Ethereum is a serious question to be answered in the near future.
