Monitoring Ethereum’s Beacon Chain: A DEFCON Alert System for Safety and Liveness

We introduce a new tool that analyzes safety and liveness properties of the Beacon chain, designed to alert when the chain enters periods of low reliability. We present the different critical periods identified from Genesis to Today, and classified by our Defense Readiness Condition (DEFCON) Alert Systems that we propose.

We have analyzed safety and liveness properties of the Beacon chain by selecting key markers and testing several time frames to identify critical periods. Based on this analysis, we established metric thresholds to classify these periods and developed a DEFCON Alert System, to trigger alerts when the chain is in conditions of high risk and when operators, developers, and researchers should be in a high state of alert. We will present the identified critical periods by our DEFCON Alert System, from the beginning to the present.