IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson Declares ‘Proof of Stake Is Solved’

April 27, 2018 by William Peaster 0 Comment 8096 Views

A co-creator of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson has since gone on to serve as CEO of IOHK, the blockchain development team behind Cardano (ADA) and the Ouroboros proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Now, hailing what he dubs as the “most significant” research paper IOHK’s ever published, Hoskinson’s declared accordingly that the standing problem of PoS is a standing problem no more. 

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PoS ‘Solved,’ Says Hoskinson

In an April 26th tweet, cryptocurrency thought leader Charles Hoskinson pointed to a newly published paper titled “Composable Proof-of-Stake Blockchains with Dynamic Availability.”

With three of the paper’s five co-authors being IOHK Chief Scientist Aggelos Kiayias and IOHK Research Fellows Peter Gaži and Vassilis Zikas, Hoskinson declared the work to be the “most significant” of “all the papers IOHK Research has written,” arguing that the Ouroboros Genesis PoS implementation can actualize “nearly identical properties to PoW”:

Of all the papers IOHK Research has written, this one is the most significant. It's a major advancement for Proof of Stake https://t.co/QNIPonatF6 now PoS has nearly identical properties to PoW. https://t.co/zAP7dSxR3y Welcome to the age of Ouroboros Genesis

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 26, 2018

The advancement would indeed be a significant one, since one of the long-standing critiques against PoS-based consensus algorithms is that they’re unproven compared to Proof-of-Work-based algorithms.

Tweet Posted to r/Ethereum, Buterin Responds

Going into the belly of the beast, as it were, Hoskinson posted his announcement tweet in r/Ethereum, entitling the thread “Proof of Stake is Solved.”

Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin responded in short order, setting off a brief and restrained back-and-forth in which Hoskinson and Buterin lobbed technical points at each other:

Buterin listed out a series of queries, including what Hoskinson’s team meant by “‘composable’ proof of stake blockchains.”

In kind, Hoskinson briefly explained that the “composable” in “composable PoS blockchains” refers to “Universal Composability: https://eprint.iacr.org/2000/067. Tl;dr PoS without checkpoints.”

The exchange between Buterin and Hoskinson ended in the thread after these initial remarks.

Getting Some Ribbing In

All being mild, of course, but the Cardano thought leader definitely didn’t resist pointing to the competitive tensions that were at play.

I posted a link to Ouroboros Genesis in the Ethereum reddit and they are having a really hard time with it https://t.co/JWHB2nWwxf pic.twitter.com/3cKpofPvr5

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 26, 2018

Later, the IOHK CEO also tweeted out his incredulity over Buterin’s previous suggestion on Reddit that Ouroboros Genesis assumes an honest majority:

"Your consensus protocol assumes honest majority…."

What practical algorithm doesn't? Casper is really screwing up people's minds

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 27, 2018

To this last point, Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir chimed in, asserting “two significant deviations” from the honest majority assumption Charles was referring to:

Well there are two significant deviations from this assumption that we make:

1) assume that consensus forming players are economically motivated by protocol defined incentives

2) assume there's an unknown number t of faulty nodes instead of using a fixed known number (e.g. 33%)

— Vlad Zamfir (@VladZamfir) April 27, 2018

It’ll certainly be interesting to watch, then, as the rivalry between backers of Ouroboros and Casper continues on in the months ahead. It seems neither side will be seeing eye-to-eye on key technical points any time soon.

Hoskinson Joins CoinDesk Boycott

Buterin and Hoskinson may not see eye-to-eye on everything, but of note is that the latter will be joining the former’s boycott of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2018 conference:

Welcome to the boycott. I'm also not attending.

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 26, 2018

What’s your take? Do you think Ouroboros or Casper will end up winning the day? Or both or neither? Let us know what you think in the comments below. 

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Images via Reddit, Freepngimg, Arbor Fence Inc.