It Isn't 'Consensus': Toward Cooler Protocol Debates
If Ayn Rand were involved in the bitcoin or crypto world, she might well identify "consensus" as an "anti-concept". The anti-concept, she said, is a "rationally unusable term". It conveys an approximate sense of meaning, but lacks the precision needed to fully communicate an idea. "In the realm of cognition," Rand said, "nothing is as bad as the approximate." "Consensus" mischaracterizes the decision-making processes that exist around bitcoin. Adoption or non-adoption of network software says nothing about the broader....
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The Stellar Foundation has released details about the new consensus protocol it hopes to deploy on the Stellar network as early as this summer. Founded on a concept called federated Byzantine agreement, the Stellar Consensus Protocol is intended to replace Stellar's existing consensus protocol, itself is based on the system used by competitor Ripple Labs. The Stellar team said in December that it was working to replace its existing protocol following network issues last September. The Stellar Foundation, the organization that oversees the development of the Stellar network, published the....
In anticipation of the Scaling Bitcoin Hong Kong workshop on the 6th and 7th of this month, BitFury has re-established its belief that the current 1 megabyte block-size limit must be changed only if agreed upon by consensus. The largest mining pool outside of China, controlling some 15 percent of hashing power on the Bitcoin network, maintains that it won't change its code to allow for bigger blocks through a solution that's not broadly accepted by the Bitcoin community - such as BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) 101. "We will not use a solution if it is not based on a consensus among the....
Most of you might have heard about the new SCP protocol developed by Professor David Mazieres from Stanford. Few hardcore Bitcoin fans may find it blasphemous, but it is about time someone created an alternative protocol. Bitcoin protocol has had its own share of troubles in the past couple of years. READ MORE: Better Alternative to Bitcoin from Stanford Professor? SCP or Stellar Consensus Protocol is being used for Stellar Digital Currency, which is an initiative of the non-profit - Stellar Development Foundation. Transactions over SCP are faster, economical and safer than on Bitcoin....
A recent unintended ledger fork in the Stellar network led to a temporary disruption of its transaction system and a broader debate about the integrity of the Ripple consensus protocol. The debate began on 5th December, when Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) executive director Joyce Kim published a blog post outlining a fork in the Stellar network that the company attributed to problems within the Ripple consensus protocol. Both Ripple Labs and Stellar use the open-source protocol to provide competing transaction networks that allow fiat money to be sent over the blockchain. The....
Algorand's PPoS consensus algorithm distinguishes it from other blockchain networks that help solve blockchain trilemma. What is Algorand?Algorand is a blockchain network created in 2017 by Silvio Micali, an MIT professor who won the Turing Award for his work in cryptography. Algorand is a decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol that anyone can use to develop applications and transfer value. The Algorand protocol is powered by a novel consensus algorithm that enables fast, secure and scalable transactions.Algorand addresses the common issues that most older blockchains have,....