EB105 – Vlad Zamfir: Bringing Ethereum Towards Proof-Of-Stake With Casper by Epicenter published on 2015-11-16T16:10:52Z Support the show, consider donating: 1FNPtiqcHnNW2Bxx27T3UTNiJNVAmRkvPv (http://bit.ly/1N6TbI9) With Proof-of-Stake (PoS) a blockchain is secured not by spending an external resource such as electricity but by using value internal to the chain itself. The promise of higher security at a lower cost is what also drives Ethereum to plan a move away from Proof-of-Work to PoS in the future. Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir, who leads their effort in the complex search for the optimal PoS consensus system joined us for an in-depth discussion of the challenges of PoS, the approach Casper is taking and what consensus in Ethereum land could look like in the future. Topics covered included: - How he became interested in consensus and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) - Why Ethereum plans to switch to the PoS systems Casper in the future - What the Long-Range Attack and Nothing-at-Stake problems are and how Casper addresses them - How a betting mechanism is used to get validators to reach consensus - What centralization pressures exist for validators and what operating a validator will look like - The role of security deposits in Casper - The difference between Tendermint and Casper - Whether forks create big UI/UX issues for Casper - Why Casper is very light client friendly Links mentioned in this episode: - Introducing Casper - Ethereum Blog http://bit.ly/1ONermJ - Review of Casper, Ethereum’s proposed Proof of Stake Algorithm http://bit.ly/1YcWG1G - Casper Protocol Specification http://bit.ly/1Nzi8GI - Slasher, Ghost and Other Developments in Proof-of-Stake http://bit.ly/1NziInC - Epicenter Bitcoin Episode 58 with Vitalik Buterin on Proof-of-Stake http://bit.ly/1PKdHNK Sponsors: - Hide.me: Protect your privacy and personal data with a free VPN account at Hide.me/epicenter Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/105 Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc Genre Bitcoin