research

I really liked Vlad Zamfir's papers on "correct-by-construction" consensus protocols. What I love about this work is that it unifies traditional BFT consensus with blockchain consensus to make something better than both! Really exciting! Abstract CBC: https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/papers/cbc-... Casper the friendly GHOST: https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/papers/Casp... I found the Abstract CBC paper a little easier to understand, as it goes into more detail about the correct-by-construction process.

Mining power was shown to be overrated by the failure of multiple miner driven or supported proposals and the success of the user-activated Segwit soft fork. The idea of the UASF was that miners would be economically incentivized to follow user nodes signaling and then enforcing new rules - and that is exactly what happen. It is also not out of the question to alter how blocks are mined in Bitcoin - Ethereum is doing that in an upcoming hard fork[0]. With Bitcoin it would be possible to not only introduce a new PoW with a soft-fork, or introduce multiple proof of work methods so that each has a difficulty target and no one PoW has a geographic, technological or regulatory advantage allowing it to achieve more than 100 / number_of_proofs_of_work% hashrate [0] Ethereum is transition from proof-of-work to a combined proof-of-work/proof-of-st

Ethereum's Casper https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/pap... It aims for more economically secure public blockchains with shorter confirmation times and less cost (electricity/hardware/inflation). I haven't delved deep enough into it to be fully convinced, but what I've gotten through so far is promising. AFAIK its the only proof of stake algorithm thats been formally documented.

People are calling cryptocurrency vaporware, but its only partly true, and definitely not for Ethereum. Check out the hard problems worked on by the ethereum team - https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/Problems Each one of those would result in multiple patents if solved by a traditional corporation.

> it's essentially vaporware and all signs point to the conclusion that it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. Here's the ethereum proof of stake code that will go live on ethereum sometime this year: https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/sim... This is the actual production code (though of course still in draft form, under review) > just toy applications that have no practical purpose The UN uses an ethereum app to send aid to Syrian refugees via vouchers: http://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-sy...