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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium : Blockchains and Their Limits
DTSTART:20161003T161500
DTEND:20161003T173000
DTSTAMP:20260407T051150Z
UID:6db10b7a3e4be888f0f6016c8ed03e13948d13a5a5fede38a3b925b7
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By : Emin Gün Sirer - Cornell University Video of his talk: h
 ttp://slideshot.epfl.ch/play/icc_sirer\n\nAbstract :\nBlockchain-based cry
 ptocurrencies\, led by Bitcoin\, have emerged as potential new infrastruct
 ure for pseudonymous online payments\, cheap remittance\, trustless digita
 l asset exchange\, and smart contracts. Yet\, despite the excitement and e
 uphoria that surrounds Bitcoin-derived blockchain protocols\, the underlyi
 ng technology suffers from fundamental limitations. This talk will tackle 
 two of these limits\, stemming from the consensus layer. First\, we will e
 xamine how malicious participants can game the Bitcoin protocol to earn mo
 re rewards than their fair share. We will see that Satoshi's protocol is n
 ot incentive-compatible: for the protocol to work as intended\, the fracti
 on of misbehaving nodes must not exceed 1/3rd\, a result analogous to Lamp
 ort's 3f+1 result for strict consensus. Second\, we will focus on the inhe
 rent performance limitations of blockchain protocols. These limits have ki
 cked off much acrimonious debate within the Bitcoin community\, centered a
 round how to adjust existing parameters to improve throughput. We will dis
 cuss how a re-thinking of the consensus layer can retain Bitcoin's open ar
 chitecture\, and simultaneously improve throughput and reduce latency by a
  few orders of magnitude\, to the maximum achievable on the underlying net
 work. We will end with a brief discussion of the challenges facing blockch
 ains.\n\nBio :\nEmin Gun Sirer is an associate professor in the Computer S
 cience Department at Cornell University\, and a co-Director of the Initiat
 ive for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts. He has been working on peer-
 to-peer digital currencies based on proofs of work going back to 2002. Wit
 h Ittay Eyal\, he was the first to disprove some common folk theorems abou
 t the security of Bitcoin. He has\, since then\, played a key role in deve
 loping new techniques for improving blockchains.\n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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