Definition ∞ A prover killer attack is a type of denial-of-service attack specifically targeting the provers in zero-knowledge rollup systems. Malicious actors flood the network with complex or invalid transactions that are computationally expensive to prove, forcing provers to expend significant resources without generating valid proofs. This can slow down or halt the Layer 2 network, increasing operational costs for legitimate provers.
Context ∞ Prover killer attacks represent a specific vulnerability for ZK-rollups, which rely on provers to generate cryptographic proofs for transaction batches. Discussions center on designing economic incentives and transaction filtering mechanisms to make such attacks economically unviable or technically difficult. Future protocol upgrades will likely incorporate defenses against these resource exhaustion attacks to maintain the liveness and efficiency of ZK-rollup networks.
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