Learning from hacks
Ever since cryptocurrencies emerged as a global force there has been concern over security. Each year hundreds of millions of dollars are stolen from crypto services. Midway through 2025 more than $2 billion had already been plundered by cybercriminals.
The industry spends exorbitant amounts on shoring up defences yet the digital siege continues. Loopholes are quickly found even when system updates appear to be watertight. On the flip side, each new attack teaches blockchain engineers where these gaps exist.
It is an ongoing battle but there are signs that platforms are starting to turn the tide and this article will be discussing the Cardano to USD price grinding attackers.
Hard grind
One of the best examples of is Cardano’s Ouroboros Phalanx Upgrade and its ability to thwart grinding attacks. Grinding attacks refer to situations where unscrupulous validators try to manipulate the randomness used in Proof-of-Stake blockchain selection. The aim is to greatly but unfairly improve their chances of producing new blocks.
Attackers exploit the combination of stake, randomness and protocol rules that determines when a block can be produced. These attackers adopt a type of “spray-and-pray” approach to generate and test seed phrases – randomly-generated cryptographic word sequences that act as a password to access a crypto wallet.
When they come across one that suits their staking position, they pounce to cash in on block rewards. While there is a certain inevitability about it all given the size of the crypto universe, these attacks are far too commonplace.
It is for precisely this reason that Cardano has rolled out its Ouroboros Phalanx Upgrade.
The VDF effect
Ouroboros Phalanx was developed by Input Output Global (IOG) [https://www.iog.io], a global leader in blockchain research and engineering. It integrates verifiable delay functions, or VDFs, into the mechanism that generates randomness for Cardano.
The beauty of VDFs is that they create a “time gap” that knocks grinding attackers off kilter. The system effectively increases randomness across numerous crypto epochs – fixed timeframes on a blockchain that serve as a cycle for events on the network.
VDFs had already been used by Cardano in its Ouroboros Praos protocol but there was a flaw: randomness could still only be generated within one epoch. This offered a window of opportunity to grinding attackers as they could still test many seed phrases before it closed.
In response, the Ouroboros Phalanx has done some closing of its own.
Surprising benefits
Stopping grinding attackers dead in their tracks is not the only benefit the upgrade has brought. IOG claims there is potential to improve transaction settlement times by as much as 30% due to the more deterministic nature of the randomness function and a reduction in clashes over slot leader selection.
The greater levels of decentralisation that occur in the Ouroboros Phalanx protocol also mitigate whale investors dominating the slot leadership space, thereby making reward distribution more equitable.
Health in safety
Strengthening crypto security invariably creates positive market sentiment, the Ouroboros Phalanx Upgrade being no exception. While its introduction did not trigger a massive spike in the Cardano to USD price, it certainly helped stabilise it.
Now that Cardano has come to grips with VDFs, one can expect future upgrades to be even more secure.
