New Measures to Combat Spam and Bolster Security
Sky Mavis is taking action to address the many failed transactions caused by bots on Ronin
Key Points
Bots that spam Ronin Network are a concern for user experience, security and the future scalability of the network
To combat spam and bolster security, we are increasing the minimum gas fee per transaction
This change in gas fee will have a negligible financial impact on community members, and will be executed in 7 days
The decision was made in a decentralized fashion and in consultation with validators to optimize for speed and security
The Challenge Ronin Faced
Profit seeking arbitrage bots have been relentlessly spamming Ronin and causing millions of failed transactions.
This had led to two problems:
Validator downtime due to sudden memory growth - downtime is a security risk that needs to be minimized.
A degraded block explorer user experience - players were forced to parse through these failed transactions
In order to solve these two issues, Sky Mavis has increased the minimum gas price per transaction on Ronin to 20 gwei, making it economically unfeasible for spam bots to profit.
By increasing the cost of these Denial of Service attacks by more than 20x, it’s more expensive to spam the chain and fill up blocks. We anticipate that legitimate transactions by our players and community members should now go through more smoothly.
Sky Mavis governs the Ronin Network alongside the 20 validators and all decisions, including this one, are made by all stakeholders in a decentralized manner.
Sky Mavis considered other more complex solutions to target spamming by bots, however, there is always a tradeoff between complexity and security. Complex solutions that require a change to the underlying blockchain gas mechanism would require a significant amount of engineering resources and would result in an increased timeline due to tests and security audits. Security is Sky Mavis’ number one priority. With this tradeoff in mind, adjusting the minimum gas parameter, which has been proven to be effective by other blockchains in the past, is the best choice forward.
How will this impact our community?
This will massively improve UX and Ronin’s transaction flow while maintaining a negligible financial impact on players
The average user makes 30 on-chain transactions per month. So, assuming 120k gas per transaction and RON priced at $0.30, the total gas cost is $0.00108 per month for the average user to transact on Ronin. After the gas price adjustment, this number increases to $0.02160 per month.
We will execute this change in 7 days to allow community projects to make preparations and prevent issues such as dropped transactions due to low gas estimates.
Looking ahead
Although it is not possible to predict and prevent all spam attacks in advance, Sky Mavis maintains an active monitoring and early warning system, ready to act as needed to protect the network.
We want to assure all community members that we understand concerns regarding price increases, and we promise that all decisions are made with your interest in mind.
Our mission is to continue to provide the best user experience while serving as the gold standard for security. This is especially important as we prepare the chain to onboard new apps and games!
And ICYMI, check out the new Ronin Wallet release!
