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Promote with Leviathan NewsEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has highlighted a key limitation of blockchain security, arguing that while Ethereum’s cryptography robustly protects assets and state on-chain, those guarantees disappear when users depend on validators and other actors for off-chain or cross-system tasks. He noted that even if 51% of validators collude, they still cannot force an invalid block onto Ethereum because every node independently checks blocks against protocol rules and rejects any that violate consensus, meaning validators cannot directly seize funds or rewrite history at the base-layer. However, he stressed that once validators are trusted to attest to things outside the protocol—such as bridge states, real‑world events, or other off‑chain conditions—the system enters a domain where “trust replaces math,” and coordinated misbehavior or bugs can lead to collusion, censorship, or value theft that the chain itself cannot cryptographically prevent. Buterin’s warning is aimed at users and developers building around infrastructure like bridges, oracles, price feeds, and MEV‑sensitive systems, which often assume validator honesty beyond what the base protocol can enforce. He pointed out that while validators cannot alter Ethereum’s state rules, they can still extract value via maximal extractable value (MEV) or censor certain transactions, and these behaviors become even more problematic when validators are granted de facto authority over cross‑chain or off‑chain claims. The comments feed into broader debates on how to design safer cross‑chain bridges, resilient oracle mechanisms, and governance models that do not over‑rely on validator discretion, underscoring that “blockchain security” is not a blanket guarantee for anything built around a chain, but strictly for what the protocol itself can verify.
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