Bitcoin-NG Protocol coming to the Waves Platform on October 10th 2017

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago (edited)


Introduction


I've been quite enthusiastic about the Waves platform and it's constant new developments and partnerships.

In the last few days the Waves team have announced that they will be implementing the "Bitcoin-NG" protocol on the platform to allow it to scale and enhance overall security.


The Announcement via Twitter:


Sasha Ivanov (@sasha35625):

Screenshot 2017-09-01 14.15.13.png

Professor Emin Gun Sirer (@el33th4xor):

Screenshot 2017-09-01 14.15.37.png


Who is Professor Emin Gun Sirer?


The professor works at Cornell University and was part of the team that discovered and warned the community about the Slockit DAO bug before it was exploited and caused the split of ethereum into two separate chains.

Screenshot 2017-09-01 15.08.10.png

Short bio image taken from "Hacking, Distributed" site.

I have been following the professor on twitter and reading his blog posts for quite some time.

He is always approachable and willing to take the time to explain things to less technical people like myself - no matter how ignorant or clueless we may be!

Unlike some academics he doesn't take himself too seriously either.

If you are interested in some of the technical aspects of cryptocurrency I would strongly suggest following him.


What is Bitcoin-NG?


From my (albeit limited) understanding it is an alternative bitcoin scaling solution that does not involve increasing the size of blocks or decreasing the block time interval.

This reduces the risk of forks amongst other advantages (see below).


How does it work?


Screenshot 2017-09-01 15.08.02.png

The blog post on "Hacking, Distributed".

I won't even pretend to fully understand the details of this but the following is taken from a blog post by the professor and his colleague Ittay Eyal:

Bitcoin-NG sidesteps the scaling dilemma by inverting the behavior of the blockchain. In Bitcoin, the system generates a retrospective block that encases in cryptographic stone the transactions that took place in the preceding 10 minutes. In Bitcoin-NG, the protocol is, instead, forward-looking: every 10 minutes, NG elects a leader, who then vets future transactions as soon as they happen. The former is necessarily limited by the blocksize and block interval, while the latter approach can run as fast as the network will allow.

You can read more on the blog post if you are technically minded.

There is also an arXiv whitepaper that goes into more detail here but is a bit to technical for someone like me to understand.


What are the advantages?


According to the aforementioned blog post these are:

  1. Increased throughput and reduced latency - limited only by the physical network itself.

  2. Greater "fairness" towards smaller miners (see blog post).

  3. Reduced centralisation incentive as a result of point 2.

  4. Reduced risk of forks and greater security.


So what does this mean for Waves?

ThinkstockPhotos-dv843019.jpg

The Waves team continues to make impressive progress.

I think the most important thing is that this will allow Waves to scale without the fears of a chain split that have plagued other platforms, most notably Bitcoin.

It is just further evidence of how forward thinking and proactive the Waves team are.

It seems almost every day they are making new deals, partnerships and announcements that make the platform more useful, viable and ultimately secure.

Anyway although I am a confident supporter of Waves, I would always caution that anyone who is interested in investing do their own personal research - don't just take my word for it.

Also please take a look at the Bitcoin-NG blog post and whitepaper for yourself.

I would be particularly interested to hear the opinions of those who understand the technical details better than me.


Thank you for reading


ThinkstockPhotos-538041160 (1).jpg





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Waves is definetly on my radar. Btw, the structure and formatting of your post is outstanding. Some of the best I've seen so far.

great, great information this will make everything better in October, thanks for sharing

You're welcome:)

For one thing, the good news for WAVES is that it will be a good investment coin.

This is very promising news, thanks for the heads up! You helped encourage me to look into and ultimately invest in Waves last month, and I'm optimistic about its future. Now following Emin Gun Sirer after your recommendation. :)

Cool! I think long term it is definitely a good investment with all the work that is happening. The prof is a cool guy he is pretty open to answering questions too even though I suspect he probably gets swamped with them.

Great info :) thank you so much
i think wave's price will increase:)

I never even knew this was coming , it's defiantly going to be big for the bitcoin world. We can finally ride with the waves . Thanks for the information, in actually going to look more into it now .

Very promising development! I don't know the details either, but electing a leader seems similar to Steem's Delegated Proof of Stake.

It does sound similar in some respects.

there was a great deal of anxiety surrounding the Bitcoin hardfork and Waves does seem to be proactive, anticipating a niche it can fill. Emin Gun Sirer appears to be a person with great insight as well, and I will definitely follow him on Twitter. Thanks for the information!

You're welcome. Yes exactly - thinking ahead should allow them to at least reduce the anxiety.

Great post as aways!

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