Cryptocurrency vs. consensus

Speaker: Prof. Petr Kuznetsov, Télécom Paris and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France

Abstract: An asset-transfer system (aka cryptocurrency) typically uses costly and cumbersome consensus protocols to make sure that mutually mistrusting users agree on the order in which their transactions are executed. It can be shown, however, that global consensus is, in general, not necessary for implementing asset transfer. Instead, one can build more efficient solutions based on reliable broadcast and small-scale, local consensus protocols. In this talk, we overview our recent findings on how to decrease or, sometimes, even get rid of the use of consensus in asset-transfer systems, in both permissioned and permissionless settings.     

Biography: Petr Kuznetsov is a computer science professor at Télécom Paris and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris in France. Before joining Télécom Paris, he received his PhD from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and the Technical University of Berlin. His research interests concern theoretical and practical aspects of concurrency and fault-tolerant distributed computing.

Host: Prof. Patrick Eugster