Vitalik suggested last week to share my fundamental philosophy of research and design in a blog article, I agreed but I complained to always change. My friend Jon West told me that everyone would really appreciate him if I was talking to everyone about my research on Casper, I especially accepted. Then someone on Reddit told me to focus on Ethereum.
Here is the story of Casper Tech, given as a chronological history of the evolution of technology, ideas and the key language involved in “Casper research”. Many of our favorite blockchain personalities are part of the story. It is my attempt to tell everything in an accessible and sequential way so that you can see where we are now (and where we are going) with our research efforts (so do not have the end of the story!). I will try to publish one chapter per day until it is finished.
Also note that this is my personal point of view, understanding the little that I could manage thanks to the work process on proof of bet. The accounts of Vitalik and Greg Meredith will vary, for example, because they each have their own vision of Casper research.
Preface: How I started doing research on Ethereum
March 2013-April 2014
I was immediately hung on the history of blockchain technology when Bitcoin (really) attracted my attention in March 2013. It was during the rise of the crisis of the “Cyprus crisis” in the Bitcoin price. I learned about cryptographic hash, digital signatures and public key cryptography. I also learned of bitcoin extraction and the incentives that minors have to protect the network. I was interested in computer science and security for the first time in my life. It was great.
Against a story of the dystopian libertarian economy, they were underground developers (like Amir Taaki) compared to central bankers in an epic global battle to save the world of the fractional reserve banking system. The blockchain revolution was better than fiction.
I consumed content on Reddit, listened to Lets Talk Bitcoin and a lot of Peter Todd content. I lost money on BTC-E (once because I took advice at the Trollbox). I chatted with my friends Ethan Buchman and Zach Ramsay on technology. We have learned Mastercoin and the possibility of building Bitcoin systems, taking advantage of its effect as a work -proof network. When I heard about proof of proof (POS) in the Alt-Coin 2013 scene (thank you ppcoin!), I thought it looked like heretical voodoo magic. The replacement of minors with pieces seemed to be an intrinsically strange thing to try to do. I ended up deciding that the long -term attack problem was fatal and that all the solutions were going to involve control points for developers of one form or another (an opinion that I learned from Peter Todd). Being a bitcoiner in 2013 was one of the most stimulating experiences of my life.
In January or February 2014, I read on Ethereum for the first time. I watched Vitalik’s YouTube videos, and I met him in person during the Toronto decentral Bitcoin meetings. He obviously knew much more the technological history than me, so I became hung, this time on Ethereum. Ethereum was the promise of decentralization made accessible to me, someone without much substance. These were intelligent general use contracts that could do everything, disturbing any centralized system. It could be and do so much that it was not always clear for me what role Ethereum would really play in the blockchain ecosystem. The story of Blockchain Tech (as I see) has taken an exciting turn with Ethereum, and I must be closer to the action 🙂
Having been invited by Russel Verbeeten during one of these meetings, Ethan and I went to the hackathon before Bitcoin Expo 2014 in Toronto. (Vitalik taught me to use the Merkle trees during this event.) I thought of encouraging and properly decentralizing the peer exam system for a few weeks, after recently rejected an article in a university review. Ethan and I tried to bring this type of system together in hackathon. Ethan did the major part of the hard work using Pyethereum, while I very slowly assembled the first guy that I never made. We arrived in second place at the hackathon (after the “Dark Market” of Amir, which has become an open bazaar). We were able to meet the whole Ethereum team at the exhibition, and we invited ourselves to the Skype public canals! Charles Hoskinson offered us jobs: it was then, in April 2014, that we started to volunteer for Ethereum. We even obtained email addresses @ ethereum.org.
So I entered the blockchain space because I hung on to the history of Bitcoin Tech, then on the history of Ethereum technology. I was then addicted to the history of proof technology technology, which I now know very convincing. I will share it, be as faithful as possible to the chronology and the way in which the parts of the image have gathered, in order to help everyone at the speed in our efforts. It can take a few chapters, but the tale time is not over until it is finished.
Chapter 1: Slasher + Security deposits: The transition from proof of naive proof to proof of modern proof.
May 2014 – September 12, 2014
When Vitalik for the first time expressed his interest in me in May 2014, first on Skype, then at a Bitcoin conference in Vienna, I was skeptical. Then he spoke to me slasherWhat I think he came in January 2014. Slasher was the idea that you could lose your block reward if you sign blocks at the same height on two forks.
This gave Vitalik the possibility of tackling directly (and probably solving) the problem. (For the uninitiated, the problem “Nothing to do as an internship” refers to the fact that the best strategy of POS minors is to exploit on all forks, because the signatures are very cheap to produce). He also opened our imagination to a new space for interactive protocols to disincitate bad behavior.
However, I was not feeling very satisfied with proof of evidence at the moment (despite the fact that Vitalik tells me a few times that he thinks that “proof of commissioning is the future”) because I was really in love with the proof of work. Thus, during the summer, I mainly worked on proof of work proof (POR Dure ASIC, Safety sharing between the chains of prisoners of war via “work evidence”, nor to completion). But I suggested the use of security deposits to a few contractual developers a few times. This planted the seed for the ideas made on the night post-Ethereum-Meetup of September 11, 2014 (Bravo to Stephan Tual for the organization + brought me to this event!).
Ethan Buchman and I stayed late to talk about proof of proof of “pirate” instead of the “party” section of Amir Taaki squat in London. I connected the points and internalized the power of the security deposits for proof of bet. It was the night when I became convinced that the POS would work and that making it work would be enormously fun. It was also the first time that I have known the surprising size of the POS design space, thanks to long arguments on the attacks and possible responses of the protocol.
Since early in the morning of September 12, 2014, I have firmly recommended (to all those who would listen) that blockchains move to POs because it would be safer. Amir Taaki was not impressed by my enthusiasm for proof of proof. At least Ethan and I had the best time.
The use of safety deposits has always considerably exploited the effectiveness of Slasher. Instead of giving up an X profit, a defective proven node would lose a security deposit (imagined being in size X / R) on which the block reward had to be paid as an interest (at rate R).
You place a deposit to play, and if you play well, you make a little return to your deposit, but if you play, you lose your deposit. It seems economically ideal, and it’s so programmable.
The addition of Slasher deposits meant that the problem nothing at stake was officially resolved.
At least, I had decided to resolve to the point that we could no longer understand why someone would like to build a proof system without security deposits, for fear of problems of nothing.
On September 12, 2014, I also met Pink Penguin for the first time, due to an introduction by Stephan Tual. I told out of breath that my point of sale ideas made the previous night. And after having respectfully refused a job of Eris Industries (now Monax) that week, Pink Penguin began to sponsor this research! (Thank you <3 !!)
At this stage of history, I did not know the other, several discoveries independent of the use of security deposits in the proof of commissioning system manufactured by Jae Kwon, Dominic Williams and Nick Williamson.
Stay listening … The following chapter concerns the central role that the ideas of game theory have played in the definition of design objectives that led to Casper!
Note: The opinions expressed here are only my own personal opinions and do not represent those of the Ethereum Foundation. I am only responsible for what I wrote and I do not act as spokesperson for the Foundation.
