Pentagon Warns Of Serious Threat To Global Economy From Blockchain Vulnerabilities

In the Pentagon’s latest report, they reveal numerous vulnerabilities on the blockchain.

What Happened: The Pentagon has released a report titled “Are Blockchains Decentralized, Unintended Centralities in Distributed Ledgers.” The report reveals a plethora of worries about the crypto industry and other sectors, intertwined with blockchain technology, such as big tech, fintech, and security.

Trail of Bits was engaged by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to examine the “decentralized” nature of blockchains. The investigation primarily focuses on the Bitcoin BTC/USD and Ethereum ETH/USD blockchains.

The studies indicate that four individual entities possess the power to disrupt the Bitcoin blockchain. Furthermore, it revealed that two entities possess the power to disrupt the Ethereum blockchain.

Trail of Bits disclosed that the safety of off-chain consensus mechanisms, off-chain governance and its software determines the security of a blockchain. The report further reveals that nodes employed by miners can be deployed via easily accessible cloud servers.

Also Read: Elon Musk's 6-Day Silence On Twitter Unlikely To Be About Tesla, Analyst Says

Why It’s Important: The findings of this report implicate serious threats to the global economy, especially the domains intertwined with blockchain technologies. Most major players in the tech sector have expanded into the blockchain and Web3, by accepting cryptocurrencies as payments, tokenizing content and assets into NFTs, expanding into the metaverse, and employing other domains of the blockchain.

Companies, such as Microsoft MSFT, Google GOOGL, Meta Platforms META, and Apple AAPL, have employed blockchain technologies to develop their security, infrastructure, and transactional circuits.

Thus, according to Pentagon’s research, major companies must re-evaluate their investments and usage of blockchain technologies. As indicated in the research, a susceptible blockchain environment would implicate a large-scale threat to a decade of work, hundreds of companies, and potentially millions of people.

Photo: Courtesy of Wiyre Media on flickr