Can internet outages really disrupt crypto networks?

In the wee hours of Oct. 18, several parts of Europe, America and Asia were left without any internet due to several undersea internet cables being “cut,” causing a chain reaction of connectivity problems across the globe. France, Italy and Spain, in particular, were faced with significant outages, with many experts claiming that vandals were to be blamed for the same.

According to Jay Chaudhary, CEO of Zscaler — an American cloud security company — there is no doubt that nefarious third-party agents were to be blamed for the cut cables that resulted in packet data losses as well as latency for various websites and applications, adding that despite their best efforts authorities have been unable to pin down the individuals responsible for the attacks.

Furthermore, it bears mentioning that over the last couple of days, there has been a slew of cut internet cables in and around the United Kingdom. For example, on Oct. 20, an underwater submarine cable was slashed near the coast of northern Scotland. While several reports have suggested foul play from rival government agencies — with the tense geopolitical situation in Europe amid the Russian-Ukrainian war — there is no hard evidence to substantiate these claims.

That being said, it is worth delving into the question of how events like these can potentially affect cryptocurrencies, especially from a network resiliency and security perspective.

Internet cuts and their effects on digital assets

To understand how internet outages, such as the one highlighted above, can affect cryptocurrencies, Cointelegraph reached out to Nikolay Angelov, head of blockchain for cryptocurrency lending institution Nexo. 

He started off by saying that the regions affected by recent cable disruptions (primarily France) account for just over 3% of Bitcoin nodes globally and just under 3% of Ethereum validators, adding that the decentralized nature of these two largest digital asset networks counters the effects of such attacks since the flow of transactions streams to nodes with internet access and connection to the blockchain. He then added:

“Not to undermine the seriousness of the incident, but such localized events cannot have a lasting effect on cryptocurrencies, as blockchain transactions can still be validated by other active nodes. In other words — almost every single Bitcoin node has to lose internet connection for the Bitcoin blockchain to seize. Admittedly, it’s been a massive inconvenience, but a…