'A 51% Attack On ETH 2.0 Has Already Happened,' Hedge Fund Partner Claims

Jason Williams, one of the founding partners of the hedge fund Morgan Creek Digital Assets, has a contentious claim about the upcoming Ethereum Merge.

"A 51% attack on ETH 2.0 has already happened," Williams said in a tweet Tuesday. "A small group of early insiders and founders already control more than 51% of stakeable ETH."

Williams added that "there is nothing honest stakers can do when this majority group predictably and inevitably abuses their control of the ledger."

The tweet came a few days ahead of the Ethereum blockchain's scheduled transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, which is happening Thursday.

The upgrade is a major development to the blockchain since it is expected to deliver improvements in terms of transaction speed and gas fees, among others. However, The Merge is not perfect, especially in the eyes of its critics.

While Williams did not provide any proof to back his claim, it is a "possibility" that many investors are worried about.

However, an AuditChain creator who goes by the name Jason Meyers on Twitter explained in detail that The Merge "is a Quantitative Regulatory Compliance Event."

"The SEC's regulatory framework is made up of #gatekeepers They are banks, custodians, exchanges, broker-dealers, accounting firms, law firms, transfer agents, EDGAR agents, and DTCC," Meyers wrote.

"The SEC makes the rules. #Gatekeepers enforce the rules," he noted further. "All gatekeepers have Written Supervisory Procedures #WSP. If a gatekeeper violates a rule, it's two violations. One for the rule and one for failure to supervise. Cooperative framework requiring gatekeeper participation."

The AuditChain creator went on to share that "the community of Gatekeepers will control, enforce and yes...validate all contracts and send transactions based on the 88-year-old legal framework."

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also said something about this narrative earlier this month. "We need to get past the myth that it's *fatal* if one entity gets enough to 51% attack PoS. The reality is they could attack *once*, and then they either get slashed or (if censorship attack) soft-forked away and inactivity-leaked, and they lose their coins so can't attack again," he explained in a tweet.

As of 5:15 a.m. ET Wednesday, Ethereum was trading down 6.68% at $1,604.90 with a 24-hour volume of $23,553,151,120, based on the latest data from CoinMarketCap.