Consensus Risks After EIP-4844: Fork Rate Surge, Sync Delays, and Network Stability

EIP-4844 introduced “blobs” to Ethereum, adding new data loads for validators and influencing consensus performance. Our analysis shows fork rates have more than doubled since its implementation, while slot synchronization times have also increased, primarily due to longer receive times. Although some fork spikes were caused by bugs, the upgrade’s changes to validator workloads suggest higher susceptibility to consensus instability and reorg attacks. While data availability delays remain minimal, the findings highlight the need for continued monitoring and research to ensure future scalability features like Danksharding don’t compromise network security.