This weekend the 2023 edition of LABITCONF was held in Argentina, in which topics of great interest to the crypto world were addressed.
During the second and last day of LABITCONF 2023, a fundamental topic such as blockchain security was addressed. It is one of the fundamental pillars of cryptocurrencies and on which the future of this entire market rests.
The forum was led by renowned international experts, who shared their experiences and points of view on this matter. Sebastián Wain, from CoinFabrik, Matías Aereal Aeón, from The Real Guild, Sergio Demián Lerner, from IOV Labs and Pablo Sabbatella from Defy Labs shared the stage. The debate was moderated by Ryan Lackey of Evertas.
As expected with a podium of such caliber, the conversation was clarifying in all aspects. To get an idea of the importance of the issue, you should consider that security is one of the three pillars of the crypto world. The other two are scalability and decentralization.
LABITCONF 2023 and the Security of Different Blockchains
Experts at this LABITCONF 2023 forum began the discussion by focusing on the current state of blockchain security. For Aeón, the big security problem in the blockchain is not the technology itself, but all the projects that are developed from it.
“Blockchain technology itself is solid. But then it’s the other things that happen around it that generally have problems.” By this, he refers to smart contracts and other solutions that go through programming. Sabbatella fully agrees with this point of view and says that the biggest example is seen in decentralized finance (DeFi).
“DeFi has a big security problem that, if not resolved, I dare say will make DeFi fail as a concept, as an industry,” he said. Next, he stressed that the main problem with the blockchain at this time is not adoption or anything else, but security.
Wain goes much further and does not rule out that the first layers themselves may have some cracks that have not been discovered. He comments that currently attackers are focused on wallets and dApps and are unaware of problems with some main layers. “Eventually, there may come a time in a few years when we start to encounter problems in the core of certain blockchains,” he warned.
With this in perspective, the experts of this LABITCONF 2023 forum consider that one must be prepared for future scenarios in the blockchain. In other words, the possible risks of the main layers should not be underestimated.
Web2 Techniques Wreak Havoc on the Blockchain
Lerner explained that Web2 criminal techniques are highly effective with Web3 applications and users. In the frontends and the theft of protocol domains are frequent actions.
They explain that bridges are often the favorite target of attackers to drain users’ funds. Even, Sabbatella states, attacks in this modality far exceed the violations of smart contracts on which dApps are built.
The issue of blockchain security is essential to address before adoption intensifies. In fact, they consider that this could definitively put an end to the issue of overcrowding. Few people would dare to return to a financial sector in which they lost their money, they explain.
With all these elements on the table, the experts at this LABITCONF 2023 forum believe that the blockchain is still vulnerable. The human factor is the main target of attackers, but in the future, the cores themselves could have vulnerabilities that are not known now.
By Leonardo Perez
