Zooko Wilcox, the CEO of Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (ZECC), the development team behind the anonymous cryptocurrency Zcash, revealed that Slush Pool, the worlds first Bitcoin mining pool, added support for Zcash. In a public statement, Slush Pool announced: We have introduced support for Zcash mining today. That is quite a huge step for us, as we have focused solely on Bitcoin and merged mining so far. It took us many months to develop and thoroughly test our Zcash mining system. We have already successfully mined over 20 blocks during the private testing stage and we are hungry for more. In its blog post entitled 5 Reasons to Mine Zcash with Slush Pool, Slush Pool outlined five major reasons why miners should be interested in mining Zcash. One of the reasons listed by the Slush Pool team was Advanced Account Security. In October of 2016, Trezor reaffirmed the importance of Universal Second Factor (U2F) and its advantages over applications such as Googles Authenticator that is built on top of a 2FA implementation called a Time-based One-time password. While the TOTP method utilized by Google and its widely utilized application Google Authenticator is simple to implement, the Trezor development team revealed that it has severe weaknesses and inconveniences. Mostly, the disadvantages of TOTP are related to security issues that may arise due to the lack of back up and the maintenance of backup codes online. Any file, data or server that is connected to the Internet and brought online can be vulnerable to attacks and security breaches. Most importantly, TOTP allows the provider to hold the same cryptographic key or one-time password, which then enables hackers to get ahold of user passwords. You and Provider share the same secret. If an attacker hacks into a company and gains access to both the password and the secrets database, he/she will be able to access every account completely unnoticed, explained the Trezor team. Considering the security benefits of using Zcash with Trezor and U2F authentication and the reputation of Slush Pool, real-time statistics of Zcash mining and elimination of pool fees, Slush Pool stated that miners who are interested in mining alternative cryptocurrencies apart from Bitcoin should actively look into Zcash mining. It is a positive move for both Slush Pool and the cryptocurrency community that more reputable and legitimate cryptocurrencies such as Zcash are being availed to miners. Currently, the two major cryptocurrencies which miners focus on is Bitcoin and Ethereum. Although Ethereums Ether is considered more as a crypto asset due to its characteristics and inflationary nature, its staggering $4.4 bln market cap appeals to a large section of the global mining community. However, as noted in a Cointelegraph exclusive interview with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum network is planning on switching to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol by this year or by early next year. He confirmed that the first phase of PoS development is nearly completed. Buterin told Cointelegraph: I expect Proof of Stake to be finished in the next one or two years. We plan to do a transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake in several steps. The first step is close to being finished and is starting to be tested now. Weve already done a lot of work in making sure the algorithms are correct and formally verified. Were planning to start implementing the first stage very soon and, depending on how quickly that goes, then move on to Proof of Stake over time. It helps that there are mining pools such as Slush Pool that are adding legitimate alternative cryptocurrencies such as Zcash which miners can rely on after major digital assets like Ethereum migrate to a PoS protocol or a proof of work (PoW) / PoS hybrid protocol. Source: Cointelegraph Image via TheBalance.com Show less

Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith have introduced a proof of stake-based finality system capable of overlaying an existing proof of work (PoW) blockchain. In their paper [1], entitled Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget, Buterin and Griffith explain that the first version of Casper (within Ethereum) could take on the form of a hybrid PoW/PoS system. The first available release of the alpha Casper Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG) testnet, built on pyethereum, achieves this. This hybrid PoW/PoS vision, albeit with only 14 listed nodes at the time of writing, can be observed on the following Ethereum Network Status Site [2]. Thankfully, the process of installing Casper FFG on Ubuntu as documented here [3] is relatively straight forward. This succinct installation process is thanks to the docker approach provided by Karl Floersch [4]. At present, my most significant hurdle to running a validating Casper FFG testnet node is not brought about by the installation process or commands. It is brought about by the fact that a validating Casper FFG node, on the testnet, must provide a minimum deposit of 1, 500 Casper FFG testnet ETH in order to participate in the validation process. As we mentioned previously, Casper FFG is a hybrid PoW/PoS system and therefore the Casper FFG node is able to be run in mining mode. The following gist contains a list of commands for mining Casper FFG testnet ETH using Ubuntu 16.04LTS. The following gist contains a list of commands for checking Casper FFG testnet ETH account balance (during/after mining). Of course, whilst mining is an option, it would be ideal if participants willing to try out the alpha Casper FFG testnet could have immediate access to the required Casper FFG testnet ETH. A faucet would be a welcome addition to the suite of Casper tools, however it is unclear which (if any) developers are working on this and/or other tools and services such as a Casper FFG block explorer and so forth. Of course the more established testnets such as Ropsten and Rinkeby provide many tools including block explorers, faucets and more. It is important to note that the implementer of the Casper FFG tesnet has announced the following upfront facts in relation to the alpha release:• the only available client is pyethereum• the performance is somewhat limited (not equivalent to test networks operated by more performant clients)• some parameters are set differently from the intended final settings• a faucet may be available soon Overall, no surprises, the installation and operation is very straight forward and reliable. In addition, the Casper FFG node interaction can be performed using the well known Ethereum Javascript API. It appears that the conditions, parameters and performance on the testnet are different from what we could expect, or what is ultimately intended for the livenet. Therefore from an economic standpoint it is unclear, at this very early stage, whether analyzing a validating node on the Casper FFG testnet will provide meaningful data to make predictions about future returns/earnings on the livenet. More importantly for now, the Casper FFG testnet launch signifies the culmination of years of research and work around crypto-economic proof-of-stake, not to mention months of active development. Casper is just one of several leading PoS systems to emerge in the next couple of months. Other projects, such as CyberMiles, will closely observe Casper’s implementation and economic models to learn from it. The history of Casper [6] has spanned many years, trails have been blazed, yet this only seems like the beginning. The realization of this alpha Casper FFG testnet sets the stage for great things to come and should be applauded. I endeavor to return with a follow up (second part) to this article, once I become a full validating node on the alpha Casper FFG testnet. If you would like an update, you can follow the CyberMiles publication. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437[2] http://34.203.42.208:3000/[3] https://github.com/tpmccallum/ethereum_casper_testnet_ubuntu_installation[4] https://github.com/karlfloersch/docker-pyeth-dev[5] https://testnet.etherscan.io/[6] https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/12/06/history-casper-chapter-1/ By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out. Finding extraordinary solutions, reading, researching, writing, presenting, programming, learning. These are just a few of my favorite things. The next generation blockchain for e-commerce Show less

There are advances towards Ethereum 2.0 with researchers confident that the new scalable network will be more robust, handling PoS attacks with grace.The post Ethereum Researcher: In ETH 2.0, PoS Attacks To Be Handled With Grace appeared first on Ethereum World News.In 2013, Vitalik Buterin released a whitepapersuggesting the creation of a blockchain network that would support applicationdevelopment without being tied to a single specific scripting language.However, the Ethereum blockchain platform mirrored the Proof of Work (PoW)algorithm used by its predecessor; Bitcoin.Over time, Ethereum has been considering abandoning the energy-intensive PoW algorithm and turning to Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm to confirm transactions. Apart from consuming less energy, by shifting to the PoS algorithm, Ethereum would have a higher transactional speed and improve on its scalability. Ethereum 2.0Unlocked The power of the new algorithm would be unlocked by the launch of Ethereum 2.0. To ensure a smooth transition, the new platform would be rolled out in phases. As per the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, the launch would start with setting bases for staking on the main chain, providing random numbers through Beacon chain, enabling Sharding, and eventual activation of a virtual machine that would give state execution results.As such, to ensure a smooth transition,Ethereum researchers have been holding AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions once in awhile to clear contentious issues and to answer questions from the Ethereumcommunity.A Robust, Scalable Platform In a recent AMA session, Buterin said that he honestly thinks that there are no unresolved research challenges at this point. On how complex Ethereum 2.0 is compared to Ethereum 1.0 and migration, Vitalik said:It got considerably simpler over the last year. Theres a lot of things in ETH2 (Ethereum 2.0) that are much simpler than ETH1 (Ethereum 1.x). But theres definitely lingering complexity, and I deeply care about mining itThe current approach is to fold ETH1 into ETH2 as an execution environment. In practice, this will mean that we would need to have a hard fork on the ETH1 side to rebalance some gas costs.Interesting, during the AMA session, itemerged that by employing PoS, Ethereum 2.0 would be more secure as it will bepossible to gracefully eliminate a malicious party in case of an attack.As noted by one of the researchers:One of the beautiful things about PoS is that these attacks can be handled with grace. The community can hard-fork out the malicious actors, so they have no more voting power. The malicious actors just burnt a lot of money to temporarily halt a network [also] If a validator behaves provably malicious, then they are slashed by having their balance reducedMinimum penalty is 1 ETH, but it goes up linearly.Proof-of-Work Isfor The Rich Additionally, the Ethereum co-founder maintained that PoW advocates for wealth inequality because although the mined coins find themselves in fresh hands, it requires a higher starting capital to become a Proof of Work miner, therefore, making PoW a big rich-get-richer mechanic.On timelines, phase one would be complete around Q3 of 2019, followed by phase tow. Beacon Chain would start finalizing Eth 1.x at around 2021. When developers are done with Ethereum 2.0, the blockchain platform will have a transactional speed of between 5,000 and 500,000 transactions per second.Another feature that will come with Ethereum2.0 is the pause button or a planned downtime. The button, according to researchers, is to first exit(which can take as little as half an hour, but may take days/weeks sincetheres a queuing mechanism) and later re-activate.The post Ethereum Researcher: In ETH 2.0, PoS Attacks To Be Handled With Grace appeared first on Ethereum World News. Show less

Reading: ‘Ethereum 2.0’ PoS Blockchain Aims to Cut Energy Use by 99% Julio Gil-Pulgar · @gil_pulgar | Jan 04, 2019 | 03:00 Julio Gil-Pulgar · @gil_pulgar | Jan 04, 2019 | 03:00Ethereum not only hopes to maintain its position as one of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies but also to achieve supremacy by becoming more energy efficient. Ethereum leadership plans to accomplish this objective by minimizing blockchain energy consumption by 99 percent.Vitalik Buterin, inventor and co-founder of Ethereum, started 2019 by regaining Ethereum’s position as the second largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of over USD 15.5 billion.However, Buterin admits that Ethereum mining now purportedly consumes more electricity than Iceland. Thus, to sustain or enhance its competitive advantage, Ethereum is aiming to reduce energy consumption by scraping its blockchain based on proof-of-work (PoW) and instead building an entirely new blockchain based on the proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm.In this regard, Vitalik says, “latest ETH update should complete transactions using just 1% of the energy consumed today by replacing PoW with PoS.”Peter Fairley, a contributor editor for Spectrum IEEE, writes that energy reduction has been part of Buterin’s vision from the start, concurring that PoW consumes energy excessively.Buterin envisions that future blockchains will be based on PoS and sharding. Sharding is a database-partitioning technique that involves separating huge databases into smaller, faster and more manageable components, known as data shards.Blockchains of the future with proof of stake and sharding will be thousands of times more efficient, and so the efficiency sacrifices of putting things on a chain will become more and more acceptable.The Ethereum devs decided on the two-blockchain solution in June 2018 dubbed ‘Ethereum 2.0.’ Ethereum contributor Paul Hauner, a co-founder of Australian cybersecurity and blockchain-development firm Sigma Prime, and heads the development of the ‘Lighthouse’ Ethereum 2.0 software client, that uses the Rust code. He expects this app and others to be running PoS on testnets in early 2019.But due to multiple delays in the past and the complexity of the task at hand, may expect this new radical shift to Ethereum 2.0 to take time and it’ll likely not see the light of day in 2019.“In October 2017, when mining time had already nearly doubled to 30 seconds, the Ethereum team reset the clock, delaying PoW’s doomsday by about 12 months,” Fairley notes. “And they will likely hit snooze again shortly.”Weiss Ratings echoed this sentiment, saying they won’t be holding their breath, at least not in 2019.#ETH mining consumes roughly as much electricity as Iceland. Vitalik says, latest ETH update should complete transactions using just 1% of the energy consumed today by replacing PoW with PoS. We’re not holding our breath for this one – at least not in 2019. #ethereum #cryptoDo you think a PoS-based blockchain will be capable of reducing energy consumption costs by about 99 percent? Let us know in the comments below.______________________________________________________________________ For updates and exclusive offers enter your email below. I consent to my submitted data being collected and storedThe Bitcoin price continues to suffer as the week...Bitcoin price fell 3 percent to lose support at $3500...Something fishy took place in the world of Ethereum on...Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung has appeared...ICOs made almost $13 billion in profits from their...XRP has reclaimed the position of the second largest...Follow Bitcoinist on social media to keep up-to-date with the latest news!We use cookies to give you the best online experience. By agreeing you accept the use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy. Show less

Buterin has voiced this opinion during Devcon 5, the Ethereum developers conference that took place in Osaka on Oct. 811. He specifically noted that after the transition to PoS higher cost of a potential attack would make Ethereum the safer network of the two.Some men just want to watch the blockchain burn Buterin started his presentation by talking about Bitcoin and paying homage to its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, noting that he created crypto economics to motivate people to maintain the network.The way the system was designed ensured that attackers would need to spend a great amount of money to successfully compromise the blockchain. Still, Buterin claimed that there was a problem with this architecture, explaining:What about attackers who have a really large, extra protocol incentive, or just want to watch the world burn? Could be a government. Or hackers that want to have some fun. The critique here says were assuming we have these participants motivated by economic incentives. What if there are people who just want to break the thing regardless?Ethereums stake-based security With Ethereums PoS implementation, users would lock their Ether in smart contracts to be allowed to validate new blocks, instead of investing great amounts of computing power and electricity as they do in PoW systems. If stakers (users who lock their coins) misbehave, their stake (the coins they locked) is slashed.The more Ether staked, the higher are the probabilities that they would end up validating a block. Just like the more hashrate (computing power) a miner has, the higher the likelihood that he mines a block. In the PoS system envisioned by Buterin, theres a period of time after a validator creates a new block, during which this block can be challenged and potentially proven to contain illegitimate data.Attackers would risk losing large amounts of ETH If sufficient proof is provided, the stake of the dishonest validator is slashed and the challenger is compensated. Buterin explained:The challenger can submit a transaction that points to [the block in question]. That calculation runs on the blockchain. The blockchains like, wait the actual answer is 256 and this guy submitted 250 so this guys wrong. The original guys deposit is destroyed and part is given to the challenger.According to Buterin, a successful attack on the network will need multiple malicious blocks to be validated, which in turn would require an enormous Ether stake that could be slashed if someone were to successfully challenge the transaction. This makes a potential attack more expensive to carry out and is an improvement over PoW, stated Buterin.As Cointelegraph reported previously, an Ethereum 2.0 PoS testnet beacon blockchain wet live on May 8. Editors Choice Show less

For the longest time, the developers behind the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain have had their eyes set on Proof of Stake (PoS). Serenity, as core developers call the iteration of their brainchild based on staking rather than mining, is slated to come to fruition over the coming years.But, some, including those predisposed to be enamored Bitcoin’s relatively simple Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism, which harnesses deflation, difficulty adjustments, and the sheer power of computational processes, have claimed that this alternative consensus medium may post all but solid results.After a number of failed attempts, due to bugs and consensus misalignment, the fabled Constantinople blockchain upgrade went live last week. Constantinople, for those who missed the memo, introduced changes to Ethereum’s virtual machine that reduces smart contract gas consumption (lower fees), along with a -33% shift in how much Ether is issued each block. Although this blockchain upgrade had roots in bolstering the short-term scalability prospects of Ethereum, Constantinople moves the project one step closer to the advent of Serenity.0/ We’re excited to release our “Entering The Ethereum’ report. Read it in full here! https://t.co/14Dg1vWKzzBut, the New York-based Delphi Digital recently expressed concerns about the viability of staking, especially in the context of current market conditions, which have drastically depressed the value of ETH.The research boutique, which recently joined hands with 51Percent and accepted Bitcoin bull Anthony Pompliano as a board member, broke down how the planned PoS model, especially the cryptoeconomics facet, could pan out in real life.Delphi’s team, headed by Tom Shaughnessy, note that the proposed yields offered through staking “look low,” even without factoring in operational expenses that come with running a server. The proposed yields offered to validators, which will be equivalent to miners on the Serenity chain, will be 18.19% APR at most — this being the case only if there is 5,000,000 Ether staked, even as transaction fees spike through the roof. More conservatively and representative of real life, validator yields will likely be well under 5%, possibly even as low as 2% to 3%. On the matter of the economic sustainability of these returns, the researchers remarked:“It’s clear that not only will network fees (gas spent) be the primary driver of higher validator yields, but that the reward structure is not economically sustainable without significant growth in those fees.”The American group then goes on to break down an Ethereum validator’s net yield, factoring in the expense of running hardware or a cloud server (which introduces centralization) for validation. They note that at current prices levels, staking will be wildly unprofitable, maybe even more so than the levels that capitulating Bitcoin miners faced in December of 2018. Mythos Capital founder Ryan Adams notes that per Delphi’s chart, at $100 per ETH (effectively current levels) and with 400 ETH in daily network fees, the annual yield would be -26%. Ouch.In a number of other scenarios laid out in the chart, prospects for validators seemed just as dire. Save for scenarios where Ether is booming and network fees are high, which seems unlikely considering the moves to decrease gas usage across the board, validators would be losing their hard earned money in exchange for processing Ethereum transactions. Thus, Delphi determined:“We absolutely believe that continued Ethereum adoption and building on the platform will help the fee market develop, but it becomes a bit of a chicken or the egg situation. A diversified and profitable validator network is crucial for the security and the longevity of the network, but that’s unattainable under the currently proposed specs without significant network fees.”As Delphi was open to criticism in response to their caution, commentators quickly threw their hats in on the matter. Even Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian coder extraordinaire behind the project, had something to say on the matter. Buterin, who has arguably become Ethereum’s version of Satoshi Nakamoto, notes that the harrowing case that Delphi laid out is “very unlikely to be true.”That seems very unlikely to be true. That implies that 1m ETH/year rewards cannot pay for a few hundred times the ethereum's current blockchain load times a ~256 overhead factor. The latter cost is comparable to the operation of the current chain…— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) March 8, 2019He claims that such statistics imply that one million Ether issued each year “cannot pay for a few hundred times the Ethereum’s current blockchain load times at a ~256 overhead factor.” Buterin adds that he isn’t comfortable with making a “‘moon or bust'” shot, as he sees worlds where Ether will remain at $100 but could claim that #1 seat on the cryptocurrency rankings, meaning that Serenity will need to operate at such low (even negative) margins.But Delphi was adamant that changes should be made to the validator payout structure, as they feared that a future collapse in Ether based on a PoS-backed chain could create a negative feedback loop, thus producing an environment that is far from secure. They specifically drew attention to a model where early revenues on Serenity would be centered around block rewards, rather than networks fees. They claim that this will give a “significant buffer” for validators, as the fee market will need to develop over a number of years.Get the latest news delivered to your inbox.Email* * I consent to my data being collected and storedPhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. jQuery Show less

Buterin has voiced this opinion all through Devcon five, the Ethereum builders convention that happened in Osaka on Oct. eight11. He in particular famous that after the transition to PoS upper price of a possible assault would make Ethereum the more secure community of the 2.Some males simply wish to watch the blockchain burn Buterin began his presentation by way of speaking about Bitcoin and reminiscent of its pseudonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto, noting that he created crypto economics to inspire other folks to handle the community.The way in which the device used to be designed ensured that attackers would want to spend an ideal sum of money to effectively compromise the blockchain. Nonetheless, Buterin claimed that there used to be an issue with this structure, explaining:What about attackers whove a in reality huge, further protocol incentive, or simply wish to watch the arena burn? Is usually a govt. Or hackers that wish to have some a laugh. The critique right here says were assuming we have now those individuals motivated by way of financial incentives. What if there are individuals who simply wish to spoil the item regardless?Ethereums stake-based safety With Ethereums PoS implementation, customers would lock their Ether in sensible contracts to be allowed to validate new blocks, as an alternative of making an investment nice quantities of computing energy and electrical energy as they do in PoW programs. If stakers (customers who lock their cash) misbehave, their stake (the cash they locked) is slashed.The extra Ether staked, the upper are the chances that they might finally end up validating a block. Similar to the extra hashrate (computing energy) a miner has, the upper the possibility that he mines a block. Within the PoS device envisioned by way of Buterin, theres a time period after a validator creates a brand new block, all through which this block will also be challenged and doubtlessly confirmed to comprise illegitimate information.Attackers would chance shedding huge quantities of ETH If enough evidence is supplied, the stake of the cheating validator is slashed and the challenger is compensated. Buterin defined:The challenger can put up a transaction that issues to [the block in question]. That calculation runs at the blockchain. The blockchains like, wait the true resolution is 256 and this man submitted 250 so this mans improper. The unique mans deposit is destroyed and phase is given to the challenger.In step with Buterin, a a hit assault at the community will want more than one malicious blocks to be validated, which in flip will require a huge Ether stake which may be slashed if somebody have been to effectively problem the transaction. This makes a possible assault dearer to hold out and is an growth over PoW, mentioned Buterin.As Cointelegraph reported prior to now, an Ethereum 2.zero PoS testnet beacon blockchain rainy continue to exist Might eight. Show less

Bootstrapping a Custom PoS Blockchain Network in 12 min readFor some time now, we have been striving to broaden our knowledge about custom blockchain solutions. When presented with a problem of creating a fair and transparent method for bootstrapping a blockchain network, we recognized how great a learning opportunity this was, and thus Electionr was born.Business-wise, PoS consensus in a blockchain network is a much better option, although it comes with a set of disadvantages which we had to overcome during development.Therefore, this article is not only about creating Electionr but also about the entire process of implementing a custom blockchain something that we have been mastering along the way.So, lets dive right in. When it comes to blockchain, Ethereum brought about a major shift forward in technology, and its limits are yet to be explored. However useful, Ethereum blockchain operates under certain rules that cannot be changed.Rules are useful that we can agree on. Yet, rules such as the ones proposed by Proof-of-Stake (PoS) or Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus cannot be applied to every single product or business that exists and wants to become blockchain-based.In that case, you either need to start building a new blockchain from scratch (which would consume too much of your time, energy, and severely affect your budget) or use some existing frameworks such as Cosmos-SDK and Tendermint.Apart from creating new rules, what else can we do? We can break the existing ones and we can bend them by finding and exploiting certain loopholes. Breaking the rules is very difficult on blockchain, but bending them to succumb to your will is .How do we fight bending the rules? By introducing new ones that will minimize potential malpractice. Our project, called Electionr, is based on Cosmos-SDK and Tendermint, and its primary goal is to put a stop to some of the wrongdoings that can occur in existing PoS networks.First things first, lets take a look at the current state of affairs in PoS networks.Business Advantages and Technological Disadvantages of PoS NetworksProof-of-Stake networks are often a more convenient solution for products that strive to introduce blockchain than Proof-of-Work networks.The main advantage of PoS is that it consumes less energy. For example, Bitcoin at one point used. That being said, China is home to the majority of miners who use a lot of energy for PoW mining, and most of it doesnt come from renewable energy sources, thus creating a negative impact on the planets atmosphere and affecting the climate.Therefore, Proof-of-Stake consensus in a blockchain network is a much better option business-wise, but it also comes with a set of disadvantages that pave the way for malpractice.One of them is its bootstrapping period. Unlike PoW networks which can start with zero coin supply and equal participation rights, PoS networks need to have initial token distribution since they require several parties to stake tokens from the beginning. That is often done via Initial Coin Offering (ICO) where the initial coin supply is sold and distributed to investors, founders, developers, advisors, etc. In order to raise as much money as possible, founders usually offer large bonuses for big investors, putting smaller ones in a disadvantageous position.However, those large investors can conspire in order to gain the majority of tokens and, consequently, control of a network. They are often referred to as colluding cartels and are not a welcome sight among PoS network members. If recognized, they can lead to a collapse of trust in a network, making it worthless in the process.Therefore, our mission with Electionr is pretty clear. We strive to make a PoS blockchain network that includes a fairer, transparent initial role distribution process, hoping to put an end to one of the pressing problems regarding the PoS consensus.Implementing a Custom BlockchainHere at (yes, we are a blockchain R&D studio), we are working with various blockchain solutions that are based on existing blockchain platforms, such as and. Moreover, we have recently become a member of the , in addition to becoming a .But, however powerful, these technologies have certain limitations. For example, Ethereum enables deploying custom logic using Smart Contracts, but its core concepts, such as the networks consensus algorithm, cannot be modified easily.Having faced a problem that involved launching a Proof-of-Stake network in an egalitarian way, which implies issuing block rewards in a fair, liquid, and accessible manner with no pre-mined sum, we knew that there was a need for an alternative solution.Having scrutinized the web, we stumbled upon and decided to use its building blocks and to build Electionr.What Are Tendermint and Cosmos-SDK?Before we proceed to discuss our project, lets take a quick overview of a simplified blockchain architecture as well as these two Cosmos blocks.Simplified Blockchain ArchitectureFrom an architectural perspective, every blockchain consists of :Networking Responsible for transactions propagation via peer-to-peer (p2p) communication between nodes.Consensus A fault-tolerant mechanism used to reach an agreement on the current state of the network. Notable examples include (PoW) and (PoS).Application Responsible for updating the network state by executing transactions in a deterministic manner. For Ethereum, this is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).What Is Tendermint?Tendermint is a Byzantine-fault-tolerant (BFT) state machine replica. Its purpose is to provide networking and consensus layers that make up a generic engine so that developers only have to worry about the application layer of their blockchain.What Is Cosmos-SDK?Cosmos-SDK is a framework for building a blockchain application layer whose power comes from its modularity.SDK applications are built by aggregating a collection of interoperable modules. Each module can be seen as a small state-machine. It maintains a subset of the state and contains its own transaction processor, while the SDK is responsible for routing each transaction to its respective module.The most notable modules are:Auth Used to manage accounts.Bank Transfers tokens between accounts.Distribution Passively distributes rewards in the system.Staking Used to enable blockchain to support a PoS system.Slashing Disincentivizes any malicious activity by a network actor with value at stake by penalizing him.ElectionrWe named our custom blockchain implementation Electionr since its primary objective is to introduce a transparent and fairer process for bootstrapping a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. The idea for this problem and its solution originated from .The ProblemIf a PoS network is launched with no pre-mine, and block rewards are issued to validators, then its starting validators can accumulate 100% of the tokens. If there is no permissionless modus operandi to nominate validators, then the starting validators may be a colluding cartel or greedy founders who can dominate the network especially in the early years when inflation is still high.Even if the cartel or greedy founders are not present, massive coordination is required between genesis validators to launch the network, which creates channels of communication that may be exploited by cartels later. If tokens are not issued to non-validators, then non-validators can never enter the validator set. Such networks are doomed to fail.The SolutionIn order to launch an egalitarian Proof-of-Stake network, validator nodes are elected using a process called Proof of Determination (PoD) during the first year.PoD is based on PoW, but with one major difference it is stopped before the major flaws that PoW brings have the chance to emerge, since it is limited to one year. By using elements of Proof-of-Work to bootstrap the initial validator set without a pre-mined sum, we can avoid giving starting validators too much power and unfair advantage from the beginning.Therefore, PoD is used to prepare the PoS network by deploying an election contract, as well as a bridging contract that links PoS chain to Ethereum.This PoD process consists of 12 monthly cycles. Each month, the validator pool is expanded to allow cycle winners to enter and take their roles as new validators.The election contract enables validator-elects to nominate themselves to become a validator. In order to do that, they need to call the contracts public method with the following arguments: their PoS key, validators operator address, nonce, and the hash of these attributes. After the cycle is over, seven lowest hashes are chosen as new validators. Any validator-elect can choose to increase their odds by cycling through nonces off-chain and attempting to find the lowest possible hash before calling the contract method.The bridge contract enables the movement of Ethereum assets to the liquidity pool on the PoS network. The bridge contract can be either one-way or two-way. The one-way bridge does not allow removing ETH and is inherently safer and less complex. The one-way bridge can also be decommissioned after the network has been bootstrapped. On the other hand, the two-way bridge gives liquidity to tokens on the PoS network since it allows them to be sold for ETH via signature consensus. The two-way bridge is more complex since it requires slashing conditions on the PoS network to prevent stealing assets.When the PoS network starts working, a minor block reward (approximately 33%) is emitted into the liquidity pool on each block.Once elected, the minimum number of validators will launch the network. Their growth is controlled in a predictable and permissionless manner until the maximum number of validators is reached. Once that happens, the election contract no longer serves a purpose and can be decommissioned. That ends the PoD process, leaving an active PoS network that is launched in an egalitarian way.Electionr ImplementationThe election (Ethereum) contract is written in Solidity and consists of three public functions:electMe() Checks whether submitted function arguments are valid and positions validator-elect in the right place in a sorted doubly linked list.publishGenesisSigs() The caller of this function is a validator with the lowest submitted hash during the initial PoD cycle. After this function is called, the pointer in the doubly linked list is moved to the first non-validator hash, and GenesisValidatorSet event is emitted, publishing elected validators that should initialize the network. The next cycle begins after that.publishSigs() After the initial cycle period, publishing a new validator set is not limited only to the one with the lowest hash but is open to anyone. Everything else is rather similar to publishGenesisSigs().One of the bigger issues during contract implementation was gas cost since we had to keep a record of every submitted hash and its submitters position in PoD. Our initial idea was to store submitted hashes in an array that would be sorted on publishGenesisSigs()/publishSigs() execution, but that idea was discarded quickly because it would require a lot of gas and could potentially exceed block gas limit, making the function uncallable.Instead, we opted to use a sorted doubly linked list with a pointer on an item with the lowest submitted hash. When electMe() is called the submitted hash is stored at the position that represents the candidates place in line for becoming a validator. For example, if the list is populated with hashes respectively starting with 0x1, 0x2, 0x3, and the submitted hash is starting with 0x0, it will be stored at the beginning of the list and its submitter would be first in line to become a validator in the next cycle.After the initial PoD cycle is completed and there are enough candidates who have submitted their hash, publishGenesisSigs() function will be enabled. The pointer that had pointed to the elect with the lowest hash will be moved to the first non-validator hash in a sorted list, and a GenesisValidatorSet event with relevant data of newly elected validators will be emitted. That way, we are keeping a history of previously elected validators on-chain. The process is repeated every 12 months when the maximum number of validators is reached.Note: Computer scientists often joke that there are in their field of study cache invalidation and naming things. We failed at the latter, as we unfortunately used both elected validators and validator-elects to denote validator winners that have submitted the lowest hashes in the cycle.Electionr ToolsThe idea behind Electionr Tools was to lower the knowledge barrier validators need in order to participate in Electionr blockchain. Certain tedious processes such as sending Transaction, Mining PoD hash, and more, are made easier with these tools:PoD Miner Its goal is to make the hash calculation more convenient and automated. It should handle all monotonous processes of nonce incrementation and put your mind at ease so that you dont have to worry whether you have sent the lowest hash of the ones calculated. You could even control the amount of gas you want to spend by specifying the time interval between subsequent calls of the electMe() method. If the miner, in any iteration, doesnt find lower hash than the one in previous iterations, it wont waste gas by submitting it to the contract.Initialize genesis script Generates a genesis.json file for bootstrapping the network. Its job is to generate appropriate genesis.json for the provided validator set when a GenesisValidatorSet event from Ethereum main network gets emitted.Ethereum cycle watcher After the network has been bootstrapped, first validators on the Electionr blockchain will need to run this script in order to watch for the next elected validator set that will be submitted by the NewValidatorsSet event.Electionr Blockchain (Validator Election and Protection)In order to allow validators to add new validator-elects to the validator set, we extended Cosmos-SDK with an additional election module. After each validator receives a NewValidatorsSet event that the PoD cycle for the month has finished, they can use the election module Insert function to broadcast that information (a list of validator-elects) to other validators.But why would validators want to add more validators to Electionr blockchain? Because the block reward that each validator gets is designed to increase every time a new validator is added to the network. It is based on the following formula: BR * n/m, where BR represents block reward, n is the current number of validators in the network, and m is the maximum number of validators.After more than two-thirds of validators have broadcast the same pieces of information about the cycle (voted on it), the consensus is achieved and the maximum number of validators is increased. Each validator-elect is given enough coins in order to achieve the minimum amount of power necessary to participate in Electionr blockchain as a validator.Newly elected validators are protected for one month. After proving that they are determined (by participating in the PoD cycle), they will receive protection and get a fair chance to gather enough coins through the block reward system before someone can push them out with a higher stake. In order to achieve that, we had to modify the staking module of Cosmos-SDK mainly the validator state change that occurs on every block.ConclusionHowever interesting, this project proved to be a real challenge. Understanding the concepts implemented by Tendermint and Cosmos is not an easy task since their project is continually evolving and new concepts are often being introduced.In other words, our team had to keep up with this rapidly evolving technology and frequently adjust the codebase so that our project stays up-to-date with Cosmos-SDK.Our future milestones are:Modification of Cosmos SDK minting formula.Modification of Cosmos SDK fee distribution to validators.Implementation of the liquidity pool and one-way bridge contract.Implementation of the two-way bridge contract.We believe that projects like Cosmos and represent the future of blockchain. Custom blockchain implementations have the potential to improve processes that underlay present-day blockchain technology, thus contributing to decentralization and facilitating the creation of secure and trustless systems that could become one of the most sought-after technologies in days to come.If you are interested in helping us finalize Electionr blockchain by contributing to , feel free to contact us.If you wish to discover more about our studio, partner up or work with us, feel free to explore our services at for more company updates and join the conversation on and. For free business consultation about how blockchain can impact and change your business model, or anything else related to the technology contact us at Show less

An overview of Casper, the Ethereum proof of stake protocol.~~~Excerpt from https://media.consensys.net/casper-sm... :I began contributing to Ethereums proof of stake protocol Casper last March, while continuing my work at ConsenSys. I have been working directly with Ethereum Foundation researchers, such as Vitalik and Vlad, on Caspers implementation. This has enabled me to dive deeply into Ethereum, consensus protocols, and cryptoeconomics.Every few weeks ConsenSys holds a company-wide Developer Roundtable. During these roundtables, developers present recent works, useful techniques, and informative topics. Two weeks ago, I gave a presentation on Casper and related concepts based on three years of research done by the Casper research team. The topics included were: An overview of Casper, economic finality, miner censorship, fork choice, usage of smart contracts for consensus, and more. Above is a recording of that developer roundtable session. Hope you enjoy!A special thanks to ConsenSys and Joseph Lubin, for sponsoring my contributions to the Casper project. Also, a special thanks to Vitalik and Vlad for sharing so much knowledge and welcoming my contributions.- Karl Floersch Show less

Share Tweet Share Share Share Print Email Imagine shopping for a new outfit, computer or groceries and paying for the purchase with bitcoin. Yes, in a real store. Why not? Love or hate blockchain, theres no denying that digital currencies have grown in popularity, and there is certainly a market for cryptocurrency acceptance at physical retail points of sale (POS). In fact, a few companies are even supporting it already, including Ingenico. But is it enough of a market to bother developing a whole new POS network and terminal to support it? David Lee, Camelgram CEO and founder, thinks so although he admits the market is still fairly niche today, similar to early PCs. So far, said Lee, only the tech-minded are interested in blockchain adoption; its still too complex to be embraced by the average person. But he believes that, if using digital currencies in the real world becomes easy, people will embrace it, so thats what he aims to do. Blockchain adoption could start with people who already have cryptocurrency assets that are currently difficult to spend, before one day reaching the average consumer perhaps through bundling with loyalty points programs, Lee suggested. On the merchant side, Lee said those who are interested also need an easy entry point that doesnt require them to navigate the weeds of how blockchain technology actually works. Thats why Camelgrams POS terminal reads and changes the distributed ledger directly when customers pay with a digital currency. Lee hopes that it will give merchants a way to participate in the growth of digital assets without requiring them to learn all of blockchains complex functions. Like many in the POS space, Lee wants to give consumers as many options as possible. After all, the customer is always right, so if he wants to pay with a digital asset, there should be a way for him to do that, Lee said and it shouldnt require merchants to become experts in every new form of payment, especially one as complicated as blockchain. To maximize the efficiency of its POS terminal and network, Lee said that Camelgram is also piloting its own blockchain currency, POS, which is in the ICO (initial coin offering) phase until Nov. 6. As people experience crypto assets, theyll enjoy it, Lee said. You can use your own money any time you want to its freedom. People will adopt it. To Invest or Not to Invest Cryptocurrency experts have mixed feelings. Han Chang, co-founder of InvestmentZen, said, I fully believe cryptocurrency is on the path to mainstream and, as such, theres plenty of room for innovation in the world of POS. That said, I dont think its fully understood by the vast majority of people and lawmakers, which means rolling out POS technology at this juncture could be premature. Chang said he holds positions in the digital currencies bitcoin and Ethereum and welcomes what Lee and Camelgram are trying to do. However, he fears the company could become a victim of its own success. If cryptocurrencies continue on their mainstream trajectory, he said, they will naturally become more regulated, and one new regulatory bill could cut the legs out from under a POS like Camelgrams. Weve already seen China significantly dial back progress, Chang said. Its not far-fetched to think regulation could put a stop to the industry before it really takes off. I sincerely hope thats not the case, but its certainly plausible. Id be wary to adopt a crypto-POS system at the moment. Jad Mubaslat, founder and former CEO of BitQuick.co, a leading U.S.-based bitcoin trading platform that was acquired in June 2016, was also wary. Investors should approach this investment with caution, just like any other ICO, Mubaslat said. Camelgrams success depends on it not only developing a POS that accepts cryptocurrencies, but also one that is competitive against established POS systems, and that the established POS systems wont add cryptocurrency. His prediction? Most established retail systems havent added cryptocurrency support because people arent demanding it. Once that happens, he believes the existing systems will integrate it. An Invitation for Criminals? Chang felt that point of sale could become another entry point for con artists who tend to be attracted to cryptocurrency.But if you ask Jon Holmquist, marketing manager for the U.S. expansion of Japans largest bitcoin exchange bitFlyer and moonlighter at Bitcoin Black Friday, its just the opposite. Criminals have gotten caught for using bitcoin, Holmquist said. Every BTC payment you make is broadcast to the network, which means the entire world can see it, track it, store it, review it, for forever. If you want to use an untraceable currency for your illicit transactions, use cash. Mubaslat felt the same way. The risk of criminal proceeds is no higher than that of cash, he said. Lee expects that accepting cryptocurrency for everyday transactions will encourage legal use of digital assets and help them break free of that reputation. For now, though, that reputation is still very much in force, and thats something that may give some merchants pause, regardless of how true it holds. It is important to assess the direct impact that accepting cryptocurrency can have on a brand, said Areiel Wolanow, managing director of the consultancy Finserv Experts. Cryptocurrency has strong associations: not only with technology, but with rejection of authority and, in some cases, outright criminality. These associations will enhance some brands and harm others. Proceed with Caution Besides reputation, Wolanow could think of a few major questions that any merchant or retailer would want to consider before investing in a cryptocurrency-enabled POS. First, does it serve current or potential customers do they have digital assets to spend? If so, will accepting them as payment generate new business in excess of the investment required? Second, although processing cryptocurrency payments has a lower transaction fee than processing credit cards, converting digital assets back into traditional financial assets can get expensive. Is the projected increase in sales worth the erosion of the profit margin? Finally, what mechanism does the merchant plan to use to accept cryptocurrencies an exchange-hosted wallet, which is convenient but less secure; a hardware wallet, which is more secure but less convenient or a middle-of-the-road software wallet? What is the right balance of friction and security to make blockchain a benefit rather than a burden for both the merchant and the customer? All that being said, while the industry experts may not be charging ahead with enthusiasm, they do see Camelgrams efforts as viable. Bitcoin could really only handle so many transactions before SegWit (essentially an update to the network that just occurred to allow for faster payments), Holmquist said. I think at this point it would be possible to handle quite a fair amount of transactions over the bitcoin network, but quite frankly there arent going to be enough bitcoin consumers right now to even cause an issue. His conclusion? This is viable at scale. Join The Conversation: Related Items:bitcoin, Blockchain, Blockchain adoptions, Camelgram, cryptocurrency, digital currency, distributed ledger, Ethereum, ICO, ingenico, Initial Coin Offering, News, point of sale, point of sale terminal, POS, POS terminal, Retail Share Tweet Share Share Share Print Email Recommended for you Weird Stuff People Buy On Amazon Cybersecurity Conference App Exposed Attendee Data Bitcoin And The Break-Even Conundrum Get our hottest stories delivered to your inbox. Signup for the PYMNTS.com Newsletter to get updates on top stories and viral hits. email: post-cont-out Show less

×Sign inSign up PostWelcomeFAQExploreCurrency MarketStolen Accounts RecoveryChange Account PasswordVote for WitnessesThird-party exchanges:Blocktrades GOPAX The Steemit Shop Steem Chat Jobs at Steemit Apps Built on Steem Steemit API Docs Steem Bluepaper SMT Whitepaper Steem Whitepaper About Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceSteemit logoTrendingNewHotPromotedLoginSign upProof-of-Work (PoW) vs Proof-of-Stake (PoS)mohamadk (25) in etherium •  6 months agoIn the near future, Ethereum plans to switch from Proof-of-Work (PoW) based mining to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mining. While both PoW and PoS are algorithms for reaching consensus on the blockchain, they go about it in different ways. Since anyone can create a block, there needs to be a way that everyone on the blockchain can reach consensus, deciding together what block accurately represents recent transactions across the network. Without a central authority, trust comes from creating consensus algorithms that are very, very hard to cheat. Proof-of-Work happens through miners trying to solve exceptionally difficult math problems. Finding a solution is basically a guessing game, but checking if a solution is correct is easy. Miners aren’t able to cheat the system because it takes real-world resources to work out these solutions. That’s where a main issue with PoW stems from: these real-world resources are computers and electricity. It takes a lot of power to run the computers, or clusters of computers, that calculate different potential solutions. From an ecological standpoint, this isn’t ideal. This leads miners to have high energy costs and this is bad for the environment. The fact that you need a serious amount of computing power, more than the average person could afford, or would even be able to work with, means the mining community is getting smaller and more exclusive. This goes against the idea of decentralization, and could potentially lead to a 51% attack. A 51% attack is when a miner, or more likely a mining pool, controls 51% of the network’s computational power. With that ability, they could invalidate valid transactions and double spend funds. They’d achieve this through creating and confirming their own fraudulent blocks, and do it so quickly, the rest of the mining community creating genuine blocks would have their legitimate work invalidated. That’s where PoS could really help. Even if someone owned 51% of a digital currency, it would not be in their interest to attack something in which they have a majority share. Also, it’s very unlikely that anyone would be interested in buying up 51% of a currency, due to it being prohibitively expensive. According to game theory, those with a larger stake in a cryptocurrency should want to maintain a secure network. Any attack would only serve to destabilize the digital currency, diminishing the value of their stake. PoS happens by a miner putting up a stake, or locking up an amount of their coins, to verify a block of transactions. The cryptographic calculations in PoS are much simpler for computers to solve: you only need to prove you own a certain percentage of all coins available in a given currency. For example, if you somehow owned 2% of all Ether (ETH), you’d be able to mine 2% of all transactions across Ethereum. PoS would be a more fair system than PoW, as technically anyone could become a miner. PoS offers a linear scale regarding the percentage of blocks a miner could confirm, since it’s based on that person’s stake in the cryptocurrency. That means someone with ten times more coins (e.g. - $10,000 vs. $1,000) would only mine ten times more blocks. Under PoW protocols, spending ten times as much money on mining hardware will produce higher computational power logarithmically, allow for more equipment due to the nature of reduced prices when buying in bulk, and might provide further advantages since highly expensive equipment often functions exponentially better than less expensive counterparts. Switching to PoS could help to encourage more community participation in Ethereum, as well as aid decentralization. Taking mining out of the hands of the few pools of GPU farms doing the bulk of mining, which somewhat resembles an oligopoly, would distribute the work evenly across the network, leading to a more democratized system. Ethereum is planning a hardfork in the near future to switch from PoW to a PoS system, most likely using a protocol called Casper. Specifics are still undecided, and Casper may not ultimately be the protocol used in Ethereum. Gustav Simonsson, a contributor to Ethereum, was on Ethereum’s subreddit and spoke about potential options, “[a]t string.technology we're exploring PoS algorithms using BLS/threshold which we believe have interesting tradeoffs compared to Casper. We're aiming to open source & publish more info on BLS/threshold soon (for use in both private & public Ethereum-based chains).” So while Ethereum seems to be looking into many options and several variations of PoS protocols, Casper still appears to be the frontrunner. PoS would do away with traditional miners, and create virtual miners, or validators. To become a validator you’d need to be bonded, meaning you’d commit a certain amount of Ether to the Casper contract. The probability of a validator producing a block is proportional to their stake, which is similar to PoW where the probability of producing a block is proportional to a miner’s computational hashing power. Once you’ve staked your Ether (ETH), you no longer have access to it as long as you’re mining. Ethereum has mentioned a proposed minimum and maximum amount of Ether a validator could stake (e.g. - 1,500 ETH to 60,000 ETH.) The more you stake, the better your chance of solving a block. These specific numbers aren’t set in stone, and most likely won’t be until the protocol is fully designed. The idea is to make sure only a certain percentage of all coins mined could be locked up in the Casper contract. This would solve any issue where mass hoarding of coins could impact the overall value of the currency. As a validator, the PoS protocol will randomly assign you the right to create a block, based upon the value of your stake against the value of all Ether. Every block, a sequence of validators is pseudorandomly selected to make the next block. The first person in the sequence will usually make the block. If they happen to be offline, during which time they’d incur penalties (which have yet to determined) and most likely be invalidated as a miner, the protocol would simply switch to the next validator in sequence, and so forth if necessary, until an online virtual miner creates a block. When a validator wants to stop their virtual mining, they can withdraw their bond. Their Ether isn’t immediately returned though, they have to wait an (as of yet) unspecified amount of time (potentially 12-24 hours) before receiving their deposit. This is to ensure certain types of attacks and fraud aren’t possible, giving the blockchain enough time to grow so their deception can easily be invalidated. While there are still many variables to be worked out, switching from Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake protocol isn’t just better for the environment, it helps to level the playing field for miners, and increases community participation. All of which is good for Ethereum. etherium cryptocurrency bitcoin world money 6 months ago by mohamadk (25)$0.002 votes+ teklordz+ cheetahReply 3      Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!Sign up. Get STEEMSort Order:  Trending[-]cheetah (73)  ·  6 months agoHi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in: https://www.ethnews.com/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-explained $0.00Reply [-]teklordz (31)  ·  6 months agoAmazing info! Thank you so much! $0.00Reply ·[-]mohamadk (25)  ·  5 months agoYour welcome :) Show less

Stack Exchange network consists of 173 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. In a r/bitcoin I've found the following statement:I think it should be noted that this paper covers a "pure" PoS system, but there have been some hacks to PoS systems to make them "work" (work while being insecure). These hacks include having a central authority control the coin (peercoin, blackcoin, and a ton more), making grinding more difficult but certainly not impossible along with making buying old private keys to attack difficult through having a centralized premine that makes the currency insecure to attacks from a central authority (NXT), or even making the next block signer deterministic, which solves stake grinding by substituting the problem with a problem that is probably much bigger, colluding delegates. , this also doesn't solve the problem of people rewriting history (bitshares).Could one explain in details how to protect PoS system using full pre-mine and a central authority? Will the system be theoretically secure or still not?If you want a system with centralized trust, I suppose you could do a 100% pre-mine, and have some checkpoints to 'lock' this, and have all nodes verify against the checkpoint coming from a trusted set of nodes. Even with this, you could have some bad players trying to cheat, and it would involve constant 'supervision' and checkpointing as needed... Why would any outsider want to use such a system, is beyond me. If we assume centralized trust, there are probably more efficient ways to build a token exchange platform anyway.PoS can't really work for the same reason perpetuum mobile is impossible or in other words - you can't pull yourself up by pulling on your own hair.The problem boils down to the fact that, with PoS, what you're staking and what you're winning is one and the same thing, a digital token. So, you're staking something that doesn't physically exist, to win more of something that doesn't physically exist. And the more you have, the more you're able to win. Sure, because there's a market you can say you're staking something of 'value', but if you got it cheap in the first place and it appreciated 100x in the meantime, the cost for you to start foul play is not at the new price, but at the old price at which you got it. Also, if you're happy with 100x, you just dump it on the market, exit clean and let some other poor soul be exposed to the risk. There's no 'investment' you can lose, because it's all digital - both the prize and the stake.With PoW, your stake is something physical. You used 'real' money which still stands for actual human work performed, invested into specialized hardware, and consumed hard, physical energy to win the prize. Why this is important? Because energy can't be created out of thin air - you can't cheat laws of physics. This means that the punishment for attempts at cheating will always cost you real-world resources and not some digital token which came into existence from thin air in the first place. Even if you sell all your winnings, it doesn't erase your investment/stake. You still have the hardware you invested in, and there is still incentive to keep it running as long as the market gives value to the token it creates. You can't get rid of it at 100x like in PoS, because only the token appreciates, while the mining gear depreciates. See the difference?There's good research on the subject: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdfBut why do we need PoW at all?Problem is, in digital world, anything can be simulated. If we're trying to simulate gold, what's to stop us to change the color of this 'virtual gold'. If we can do it, then why it should have value? The most important property of a cryptocurrency is ensuring certainty of its properties, like emission, fungibility, immutability, security etc. We often hear the term 'voting' but I think it is misleading. When you vote, it's someone else performing some action. This is not the case with cryptocurrency. When you 'vote', you're really only saying "the crypto with xyz properties is the one I consider valid" and if someone sends you something with xyq properties, you ignore it as invalid. If there are many peers stating exactly the same xyz properties, then it becomes a currency among them, and anyone accepting xyz as properties is free to join and transact. The more peers accepting it, the more certain you are you will have peers to transact with who're accepting the xyz properties. So where's the vote making someone else do something? There's no such vote. You either accept xyz or you don't. That's the role of nodes. There's one property which the nodes simply aren't able to verify - chronological ordering of transactions and for that, we need miners. That's it.With PoW, any attempt at rewriting history is expensive. With PoS, it's free. 'Solutions' to make PoS 'work' like checkpoints defeat the purpose because how can you tell which checkpoints are the 'right' ones? Someone said so? Some 'trusted' server? I thought we're building trustless decentralized systems here :)If you have a central authority, why do you need a consensus algorithm like PoS at all? Just have the central authority sign all the blocks, and let nodes reject blocks without valid signature.Part of your issue with pure pos system with no checkpoints and full premine is that the fund holder of all the coins or tokens has nothing at stake to loose. This is fine when there is no value in the coin but as soon as there is value the incentive to double spend and cash out on your large holding while being able to double spend becomes too much that it will be done. Nubits ran into this problem with the need for 51% or more on votes to pass motions on buy backs on the coin being approved by the same 51% stake in the coin holders. No one has a pure pos system that works, peercoin is due to remove the centralized checkpointing in the next version 0.6 and I have not seen any other pos coin achieve the necessary distribution to be confident the network will not be at risk by removing the checkpointing. Any pure pos system one has to ask about distribution methods and how the market value has been determined, has it been through true market fluctuations over time or has it been inflated by a few holding coins off the market just to push the price high?Trust has to be earnt, by a premine and central authority how has any trust been earnt to invest in the cryptocoin? By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.asked1 year, 2 months agoviewed 1,136 times active5 months ago site design / logo 2018 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required. rev2018.4.21.29995 Show less

The debate over which consensus algorithm is right for blockchain is long overdue. While remains popular with Bitcoin (), interest in protocols has been picking up speed, especially with the , Ethereum 2.0. Which one is better, though, remains up for debate. For example, Ankit Bhatia, a co-founder and the CEO of Sapien, told Cointelegraph: “Proof-of-stake is simply more scalable because it eliminates the race to solve math problems and the need for computation to grow the pot.” According to Bhatia, PoS’s ability to make use of sharding makes it the better choice: Bhatia’s excitement about PoS is also shared by Jack O’Holleran, a co-founder and the CEO of Skale Labs, who told Cointelegraph that Ethereum’s shift to a PoS blockchain “will be greatly positive assuming the Ethereum community can figure out an elegant transition from ETH! To ETH2.0.” Meanwhile, Sinjin David Jung, the managing director of IBMR.io, a blockchain tech startup, toes a different line. Although he identifies transaction speeds as an obvious advantage to PoS blockchains, he mentioned that “PoW will always be the superior stand-alone solution when it comes to establishing decentralization off the bat,” adding: Interest in PoS networks has started to accumulate. Below is a list of some of the biggest PoS platforms in crypto and specific features that make them stand out: Even though the EOS blockchain is privately owned, the platform was created to be a community-driven blockchain network. One of the elements that make the blockchain scalable is the fact that it uses a delegated proof-of-stake protocol. A DPoS blockchain is one that uses a democratic voting process to boost security and achieve a decentralized governance structure. In a DPoS scenario, token holders get to vote for a select group of delegates to make decisions on their behalf. Also, the platform uses a multithreading mechanism to help improve scalability. For instance, if a smart contract needs to be executed, there is no need to wait for confirmation if the network is clogged. With multithreading, a single set of code — in this case, a smart contract — can be deployed by several processors at different stages. This makes it possible for a number of computers to contribute to the overall processing power of the network. Thanks to DPoS, decentralized applications on the EOS blockchain can reportedly handle over 1,000 transactions per second, while the current Ethereum blockchain can only achieve between 10 and 20 TPS. At the start of the project, through an , boasting one of the biggest ICOs at the time. The is the native token of the Tezos blockchain, and it is used in the creation of smart contracts on the platform. Unlike most PoS blockchains, Tezos goes a step further to offer a DPoS protocol that incentivizes users to participate in the development process of the platform. Related: For instance, if a developer proposes an upgrade, they can attach their wallet address with an invoice to that upgrade. Then the XTZ holders get to vote and determine whether those upgrades should be implemented. The developer is paid as soon as the upgrades are approved by stakeholders. Also, through a rewarding process called Baking, users who stake their XTZ tokens for transaction validation not only qualify to be delegated on the network but are also rewarded with 16 XTZ for every block they validate. Similar to Tezos, Tron is a blockchain platform that runs on a DPoS protocol. In May 2018, the Tron () cryptocurrency that first launched as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum’s blockchain moved to its dedicated blockchain with the goal of enabling high-speed transactions, as well as a free-for-all staking service. With a DPoS, TRX holders can endorse delegates to validate blocks. However, unlike Tezos, Tron uses a system of 27 super representatives who create the blocks. Therefore, TRX holders can choose among the 27 validators as their representative. The super validators are selected every six hours, and candidates with the most votes are awarded the positions. After validating blocks, the super validators get to share their block rewards with those who voted for them. Tron holders can also freeze their STEEM holdings and earn points that help reduce the costs of transactions on the platform. Neo is one of the fastest-growing blockchain networks in the crypto space. Launched in 2014, Neo is commonly referred to as the “Chinese Ethereum” because it is a Chinese-based open-source blockchain seeking to digitize real-world assets. Like Ethereum, Neo is a smart contract platform that supports an ecosystem of decentralized applications. However, runs on a Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance 2.0 PoS blockchain that is modified to act as a government system with delegates and speakers. Through Neo’s dBFT algorithm, NEO token holders are granted governance rights and can make decisions on the implementation of changes to the network, including the validation of transactions. NEO token holders are rewarded with GAS for staking their NEO. GAS is the sister cryptocurrency on the Neo network and is used to pay fees and on the network. Dash () claims to be a cryptocurrency that improves Bitcoin. It operates through a blockchain network with a two-tier incentive known as the Masternode network. At its core, the Masternode network operates on a modified PoS algorithm with an instituted system of master nodes that simplify the block validation process. The master nodes on the Dash blockchain have a starting stake of 1,000 DASH that acts as collateral. This enabled the master nodes to earn rewards while improving the scalability of transactions on the network. Essentially, unlike the Bitcoin network that requires all nodes to validate transactions, the Dash network, through the Masternode system, reduces the number of nodes required to approve transactions, thus improving the speed of the network. For token creators looking for alternatives to prominent DApp platforms like Ethereum and Neo, Waves offers an opportunity to create custom tokens. The platform was launched in 2016, following a $16-million ICO campaign. Waves is a PoS cryptocurrency that powers the whole platform and also comprises a Web 3.0 development toolset and a DEX exchange. Its creator claims that the network can achieve upwards of 500 transactions per second. The cosmos network white paper was first released in 2016 with the hope of creating an interoperable and scalable blockchain that makes it easy for developers to host any DApp with ease. With a pluggable and modular design, the founders of Cosmos () included a PoS consensus protocol that comes with validators and delegators. The delegators can delegate their stake with a validator of choice out of 100 validators. Among the notable mechanisms of checks and balances used on the Cosmos network is the Slashing and Lockup periods. Simply put, slashing is when a locked up stake is destroyed as a result of undesirable behavior on the platform. Like most PoS blockchains, token holders delegating their stake to validators are rewarded based on the actions of the validators they pick. Annual rewards on the Cosmos blockchain range between 7% and 20%. Another open-source public blockchain that operates like Ethereum but on a PoS blockchain is Qtum. Thanks to its modified decentralized governance protocol, the Qtum blockchain does not require a hard fork to increase its block size. Instead, Qtum is built on a proof-of-stake version 3 that is an upgrade built for UTXO-based blockchains. Thus, even though Qtum operates on a PoS protocol, security against malicious attempts to rewrite or reverse transactions is enabled through the UTXO model. Compared to Ethereum’s proposed Casper model (a self-regulatory system), Qtum’s combination of the UTXO model plus a PoSv3 consensus protocol makes it significantly more expensive for bad actors to hijack the network. VeChain is famous for its application of blockchain technology in the supply chain industry. It is a public blockchain with an ecosystem that attempts to solve real-world problems. Since its launch, the Singapore-based platform has established itself as a pioneer in blockchain adoption with a list of partnerships including PriceWaterhouseCoopers, BMW Group and Deloitte, to mention a few. Although the platform has had controversies, such as , the company behind the project appears to have dealt with the issues. VeChain uses a proof-of-authority protocol — which is essentially a PoS but with a different model whereby a validator serves as a stake. Therefore a PoA is a modified PoS in that there is a central party — The VeChain Foundation — that validates transactions instead of having anonymous block producers. With the PoA model, VeChain claims that its blockchain is capable of faster low-cost transactions, as every validating node is handpicked by the central party. With an ROI on token staking of 2% and above, VET holders get rewarded with a token called VTHO, which is used to fuel transactions on the VeChain blockchain. Although the long-awaited launch of Ethereum 2.0 has dragged its feet, that its release “will come online this year.” In addition, a lead developer working on the launch of Ethereum 2.0 has since. According to Buterin, the first iteration of Ethereum 2.0 will launch on an independent PoS network, then sharding will be enabled in Phase 1, and eventually, all shards will be consolidated at the final stage. According to reports, the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 will enable Ether () holders to pledge their coins to protect and validate the network. Bhatia believes that the shift to Ethereum 2.0 will “drastically enhance the accessibility of the network,” adding: “No longer will validators need massive GPUs to mine blocks; instead, any individual with 32 ETH will be able to stake and profit.” In his view, other computational improvements such as “optimistic rollups” sharding and Ethereum-flavored WebAssembly, or eWASM, will improve the efficiency and scalability of the Ethereum blockchain. With the eagerly awaited shift of Ethereum’s blockchain from a PoW consensus protocol to a PoS model, experts in the crypto world expect the interest in PoS, as well as in ETH, to increase. Related: However, despite the optimism around PoS blockchains, Bhatia shared his concerns about the dangers of PoS protocols. He is also worried about low liquidity and whales being the biggest risks to PoS blockchains. He identified the fact that “people with vast reserves of the given asset can wield great power,” thus easily dominate “the ecosystem and write an unofficial rulebook” — as was the case with Steemit. Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, of the Steem blockchain by leveraging tokens in his control as well as those held by customers in exchanges. However, O’Holleran believes that the “risks of PoS blockchains are greatly over-exaggerated.” In his view, the only disadvantage that comes with PoS networks is that “we don’t yet have a decade of proof under our belt” to prove whether they work. He added: “With each year, PoS will grow in reputation and use. Concurrently, the networks will become more stable, more performant and more secure.” Like what you read? 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Ethereum, due to the unprecedented rise in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, has had to fast track its long-awaited ETH 2.0 upgrade. One major feature of the upgrade is the network’s shift from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm. Vitalik Buterin, in a recent post, has put forward three reasons why the PoS consensus algorithm is superior as compared to PoW. To further iterate this, Buterin did a simple calculation of how much it would cost to attack a PoS and a PoW blockchain network. Proof-of-Work (PoW) It is important to note that the PoW blockchain will either operate as GPU-based or ASIC-based. For a GPU-based network, renting the miner is the only accrued cost, so attacking the network is fairly easy. It only requires a few hours of spending a little more than $1 dollar per day in block rewards. The average total cost of attacking a GPU-based network is approximately $0.26. Over time, this cost will diminish to zero as the attacker will also still receive block rewards. For the ASIC-based PoW network, the attacker will first need to purchase an ASIC miner. They have a life span of approximately two years before wear and tear sets in. ASIC mining cost is shared as “1/3 ongoing costs and ~2/3 capital costs.” To earn $1 every day, miners will spend approximately $0.33 on electricity and maintenance and about $0.67 on their ASIC miner for about two years. This, in total, amounts to $486.67. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) For the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, the only cost is the operating cost needed to run a node. It also depends on the amount users are willing to stake to earn $1 every day. Vitalik Buterin assumes that an approximate 15% return rate is enough incentive to attract stakers. $1 of rewards every day will attract $2433 (approximately 6.667 years’ worth of returns in deposits). Electricity and equipment cost is small and almost negligible. Let’s, however, estimate these costs to be ~10% of the total cost of staking, so we only have $0.90 per day of rewards. The total cost of attacking a PoS network is estimated at $0.90/day x 6.667 years = ~$2189. Notably, these costs are expected to increase over time. Source: John Phillips/Wikimedia Commons While a GPU proof-of-work (PoW) system is prone to a “spawn camping attack” (SCA), PoS networks are completely resistant to such attacks. ASIC PoW is also less likely, but not completely, resistant to a spawn camping attack. An SCA attack is one where an attacker continuously attacks a particular blockchain network, intending to exploit it until it is useless. A GPU-based network is practically helpless against such an attack. To recover from an attack, an ASIC-based network will need to hard fork to change its PoW algorithm. This essentially locks out the attacker as well as honest miners on the blockchain network. However, Buterin points out that if the attacker is willing to bear the initial cost, then the situation will revert to that of a GPU-based network. The attacker will face minimal costs as there is no time for new ASICs to be built and distributed that reflect the new algorithm. A PoS network, however, has an inbuilt “slashing” feature. One that makes the confiscation of the attacker’s funds possible. With this feature, no other person is affected by the network. In the case of a much-higher attack, community members can launch a minority user-activated soft fork (UASF). This process will destroy a large portion of the attacker’s funds. So attacking a PoS network is expensive and the network will also be up and running within a short period of time. A PoS network is more decentralized than both the GPU and ASIC PoW consensus algorithms. However, a GPU-based PoW network is fairly decentralized as compared to ASIC mining. In addition to top-notch decentralization, a PoS network is also resistant to censorship. The consensus can simply be run on a laptop or through a VPN, thus being very hard to detect and track. The ETH 2.0 protocol has been touted as the solution to all of Ethereum’s network scalability issues. All things being equal, the genesis layer of the protocol is expected to go live on December 1, 2020. Ethereum (ETH), at the time of writing, was down by 0.7%, and trading at $458.83. The crypto also has a market cap of $52,033,637,932 and a 24-hour trading volume of $9,806,264,123. Find out more about the ETH 2.0 proposed upgrade to a PoS algorithm on the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel. Show less

One of the most critical aspects to understand blockchain – its speed, applications, and potentials is consensus algorithms. It determines everything from network security, confirmation speed, to environmental friendliness. As crucial as it is, few comprehend how such a dynamic concept works in practice; and among the most misunderstood aspects include just how new blocks of information are securely added to the ledger, considering no centralized authority is engaged to maintain the integrity of the network. As a recap from an earlier post, blockchain provides a way for transactions to be ordered and verified in a distributed ledger, and ultimately provides a record of truth over a period of time. Without a central intermediary, the network of participating users that make up this system need to agree on the validity of what’s being added to the ledger, using a set of pre-defined rules. A consensus needs be reached for the majority of the nodes in the network. But just how effective it is to implement such a consensus remains a work in progress til this very day…. The problem of ensuring reliability in decentralized systems was first formalized in the scholarly paper “The Byzantine Generals’ Problem”, published back in 1982. In the illustration created by the authors, a Byzantine army is attacking a city and has it completely encircled. To proceed, the generals who are dispersed around the city’s periphery must agree on a battle plan; but while some generals want to attack further, others want to retreat. And to complicate matters, the generals are so far apart from each other that messengers are required to deliver communications between them, while one or more generals may also be a traitor intending to sabotage the situation. Given such a scenario can the army execute any strategy? Yes they can, but it will require a majority (i.e. 51% or more of the generals) to agree on a chosen strategy. This Byzantine Generals’ Problem is analogous to solving consensus issues on the blockchain. The nodes must all agree on a certain set of rules, and be able to move forward by agreeing on a particular assessment of transaction information before it is added onto the chain. This is not easy – thousands of people use the network and must ensure that they agree on the validity of new information that’s to be added, on top of preventing bad actors from sabotaging the ledger and rewriting history. So, a specific type of consensus mechanism/algorithm must be adopted. This protocol enables a coherent group of network entities to work together in order to update the ledger in a secure fashion. In the words of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, the purpose of a consensus algorithm is to “allow for the secure updating of a state according to some specific state transition rules, where the right to perform the state transitions is distributed among some economic set”. Buterin identifies this set as one containing users who can “be given the right to collectively perform transitions via some algorithm” and who “must be securely decentralized – meaning that no single actor, or colluding subsets of actors, can take up the majority of the set, even if the actor has a fairly large amount of capital and financial incentive”. The consensus algorithm, therefore, ensures that through decentralization, the next block to be added to the chain is the one and only version of the truth in the system. The first consensus protocol to emerge in the crypto era via the Bitcoin blockchain was “Proof-of-Work”. PoW requires that each validating user proves that he has performed a computational action as a way to prevent the network from being attacked by such forces as spam and denial of service. Each node tries to solve complex cryptographic problems using their own computational resources – the one who eventually finds the solution can confirm the transactions and write the block onto the chain. This means that the nodes (also known as miners) are competing with each other to create the next block of transactions on the blockchain. In turn, the winning miner receives cryptocurrency tokens as a reward for the exceptional levels of time and energy he spent generating the solution; a Bitcoin miner, for example, will receive Bitcoin as his reward. This reward system incentivices miners to generate the right solution and ensures the network remains secured; while the newly minted cryptocurrency is added to the overall circulating supply of coins on the network. Given the heavy utilization of computational resources involved in mining, PoW is considered to be costly, wasteful and inefficient. Having thousands of miners working on just one solution each time is an excessive use of resources, especially as the only block that has any value thereafter is the one that is solved. With each new block being mined, therefore, there’s a heap of effectively useless bi-product. What’s more, mining is a costly endeavor. Some estimates put the electricity consumption costs of the entire Bitcoin mining operation in the region of $500 million per year. In fact, one study has equated the entire power consumption of Bitcoin mining to Ireland’s average electricity consumption. And that’s just for Bitcoin – a whole heap of new cryptocurrencies have emerged that utilize some forms of PoW algorithm. The hardware used in the mining process, moreover, is usually an advanced and expensive piece of proprietary kit. This has led to miners buying up this hardware, which in turn has spurred massive development on the manufacturing side to create the most advanced mining-specific hardware possible. Take the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) as an example, which is a highly specialized piece that has been designed to exclusively mine Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While ASICs significantly improve the efficiency of the mining process, the unique nature of such niche equipment makes it rather expensive. Most of the research and development of ASICs currently originates in China, a country where electricity is also comparatively cheap. So, given that Chinese ASICs manufacturers have considerable incentives to simply mine bitcoins for themselves – and indeed do so – it has led to an estimated 60-70% of Bitcoin’s total hashing power congregating in this one country alone. As such, the problem of excessive centralization of power emerges – something that is antithetical to the founding tenets of blockchain. There is little to prevent such closely neighboring miners from colluding in order to control a substantial and influential proportion of the blockchain’s processing power, which means they could then nefariously write data onto the ledger that may deviate from the truth. In terms of our Byzantine Generals’ analogy, this would be equivalent to a collusion among a faction of the generals. The emergence of PoS in the form of the Peercoin project back in 2012 was an attempt to solve the aforementioned problems of cost, efficiency and the susceptibility towards centralization associated with Proof-of-Work. The basic premise is that instead of purchasing costly computer equipments to mine blocks ahead of one’s competitors, each ‘validating’ node in the network purchases the coins used in the specific blockchain system. Under the PoS algorithm, tokens are issued to the validating nodes in the network from the very beginning of the network’s existence, which means that unlike PoW, tokens are not concurrently minted as new blocks are added to the ledger (although some blockchains employ a hybrid PoW/PoS algorithm which allows PoW minting to take place before switching to PoS). A specific node is then selected to commit the new block every few seconds or minutes. But if a node holds more coins, it retains greater power over what is considered to be the truth on the ledger. As such, the selection is strongly influenced by those that have the most coins – the more they have invested in the network, the more they have to lose in the event of any mishaps. Another influencing factor is the time period that coins have been held by users, which indicates whether they are invested for the long-term – clearly a more desirable position than someone who just purchased their coins yesterday. So, those with more stake in the network are deemed to be more trustworthy, and considered less likely to attack the network. Indeed, in order to mount an attack, a user would have to buy 51% of the coin value of the entire network. This would be expensive, as well as nonsensical – there is no incentive for a user to attack a network in which he has so much invested. Attacking oneself is clearly an illogical action to pursue. In addition, PoS is often preferred over PoW because it requires considerably less computational work, meaning that it is less laborious and less wasteful. And with less computations, therefore, the cost of executing PoS is substantially lower. This removes a major barrier to entry for those wishing to become block validators. The lack of mining requirements simply removes the need for specialist hardware to be developed; instead, the technology can easily run on consumer-grade computers. One of the most cited problems with Proof-of-Stake, however, has come to be known as the “Nothing-at-stake” problem. Under PoW blockchains, there is an incentive to keep on mining the longest chain on the ledger, as this chain will be considered the primary version of the truth and the one that earns the miners their rewards; so miners are clearly incentivized to mine that one single chain. But with PoS, there is little to prevent a miner from mining on numerous PoS chains, especially given the fact that there is negligible computational expense to the miner under this algorithm. Hypothetically speaking, therefore, a PoS miner operating on various chains could make it difficult for the network to reach consensus, while a bad actor could attempt to rewrite history. This problem is particularly pertinent when a fork in the chain transpires (as happened with Ethereum, which then produced Ethereum Classic); in such a situation, validators using PoS could place stakes on both blockchains which makes it easier to alter the truth in their favor and earn profit. Indeed, partially as a way to solve this problem, Ethereum is in the process of making the transition from PoW to a new consensus strategy called Casper, which will employ a PoS algorithm. The move is intended to make the processing of new blocks onto the chain significantly more efficient, while a mechanism will be adopted to punish those participants who attempt to stake on two different chains. Further enhancements to the PoS model are now coming into play thick and fast among many of the biggest cryptocurrencies. Among the most popular is the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) algorithm which was championed by Dan Larimer, the driving force behind several high-profile blockchain projects including BitShares, Steemit and EOS. DPoS differs from PoS by having the validating process conducted by a group of delegates who are selected by the network users, and who have separate nodes for mining the blocks. Because these delegates are deemed to be trustworthy, this partially solves the nothing-at-stake problems. And the popular Chinese platform NEO employs an algorithm called Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance, which employs a delegated voting process in order to prevent the chain from forking in two. Ripple meanwhile, utilizes its own “consensus ledger” which allows the participants and history to define truth in the system, as opposed to the technology. And many more consensus algorithms continue to surface, each solving problems unique to a particular application of blockchain: Overview of Distributed Consensus Mechanisms (Source) Clearly, the search for the ideal consensus mechanism remains an unfinished business at this stage. One expects that it will be an ongoing process to improve such factors as cost, efficiency and scalability, which will lead to some intriguing advancements during the coming months and years. Achieving a balance between the trade-off of decentralization, processing speed and efficiency will likely remain at the heart of further development. And as more use cases for blockchain continue to branch out, it seems highly probably that the range of consensus mechanisms will grow and evolve in tandem. This will also likely spark further novel applications of blockchain. Dr Justin S P Chan has a passion for clarity and synergy - seeing through the complexity of the intersecting spheres of technology, finance, innovation and social dynamics, to enable game-changing collaborations between entrepreneurs and innovative opportunities. Combining the vision of a true inventor and entrepreneur with his data-driven, evidence-based approach to investment, Justin also co-founded OCIM and serves as Chief Investment Officer for its fund management platform. Within OCIM, He co-manages OC Horizon Fintech, a transformational hedge fund, where he blends real applications, expertise and future-awareness into truly exceptional investment performance. Justin gains inspiration for these projects from his global network of contacts in investment and fintech communities, where he stays on the pulse of fast-moving conversations and trends affecting global markets and emerging technologies. Justin can be reached at justinchan@datadriveninvestor.com. Copyright 2018 by Data Driven Investor. Show less