Master Workshop: Layer I solutions

Scaling blockchain: The final frontier

Blockchain technology’s potential has been much publicised. However, there remain significant obstacles to be overcome before it achieves widespread adoption.

The most pressing question to be answered is whether or not it can scale-in terms of both total transaction volume and the number of independent participants involved in processing them.

A wide variety of solutions have been proposed. These fall into two categories — layer I ‘on-chain' solutions, such as Ethereum’s effort to implement sharding, or layer II solutions built on top of the blockchain ‘off-chain', such as the Lightning Network.

How feasible are these solutions? Are these just short-term fixes? What are the fundamental tradeoffs? What can we expect in the future?

#binarydistrict

What you’ll master

This 2-day workshop saw 20 of the world’s foremost developers, researchers and industry experts lead discussion on a variety of scaling solutions for blockchain.

Highlights included:

DAG-based cryptocurrency frameworks
Consistency guarantees of different blockchain algorithms and their relation to scalability concerns
OmniLedger: A secure, scale-out, decentralised ledger via sharding
PolyShard: How coded sharding achieves linearly scaling efficiency and security simultaneously

This workshop is the second in our series of 2-day Master Workshops examining scaling solutions for blockchain. It followed our ‘Off the chain' event earlier in the year, where 25+ experts including Patrick McCorry, Liam Horne, Jason Teutsch and Lefteris Karapetsas joined us in Berlin.

What they said about Master Workshop: Off the chain:

We should have more events like this … where we can all talk together and discuss our solutions and how we can combine our work.

Lefteris Karapetsas, Raiden Network Developer Team Lead

I feel like there’s a lot of diversity here and you really get an idea of what the latest is in the space. It’s been a really good day for me.

Jason Teutsch, Founder of TrueBit

Registration for this event is now closed. For information about the event please email [email protected]

Speakers

Mustafa Al-Bassam

PhD researcher, UCL

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Ewa Syta

Assistant Professor, Trinity College, Connecticut

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Sarah Azouvi

PhD researcher, UCL

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Philipp Jovanovic

Postdoctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Kogias Eleftherios Kokoris

PhD Student, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Linus Gasser

Lead Software Engineer, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

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Zhijie Ren

Postdoctoral Researcher, Delft University of Technology

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Chris Carr

PhD Candidate, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Sergi Delgado Segura

PhD Researcher, Autonomous University of Barcelona

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Mingchao Yu

Staff Engineer, Dolby Laboratories

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Vasily Kharin

Researcher, Research Institute

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Ren Zhang

Researcher at Nervos and PhD Researcher at KU Leuven

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Roman Oliynikov

Research fellow at Input Output HK (IOHK), Professor at Information Systems and Technologies Security Department at V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine

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Yoad Lewenberg

Researcher, DAGLabs

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Alex Manuskin

MSc student, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

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Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz

PhD student, Bogazici University Istanbul

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Greg Scullard

Lead Developer Advocate, Hashgraph

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Kirill Kharitonenko

Apograf Product Owner, Research Institute Moscow

Yue Guo

PhD student, Cornell University

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Pierre-Louis Roman

PhD Researcher, University of Rennes

Lucianna Kiffer

PhD Researcher, Northeastern University

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9:30 am — 9:35 am

Welcoming words

9:35 am — 10:00 am

Another coin bites the dust

Sergi Delgado Segura, PhD Researcher, Autonomous University of Barcelona

10:00 am — 10:30 am

DAG-based cryptocurrency framework

Chris Carr, PhD Candidate, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

10:30 am — 11:00 am

Scalability of distributed ledgers: DAG-based decentralized consensus protocols for cryptocurrencies

Roman Oliynikov, Research fellow at Input Output HK (IOHK)

11:00 am — 11:30 am

Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution

Yoad Lewenberg, Researcher, DAGLabs

Coffee break 11:30 am — 12:00 pm

12:00 pm — 12:30 pm

Autoleakus: Practical Non-Outsourceable Proof-of-Work Protocol

Vasily Kharin, Researcher, Research Institute

12:30 pm — 1:00 pm

Enhancing Bitcoin Security and Performance with Strong Consistency via Collective Signing

Kogias Eleftherios Kokoris, PhD Student, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

1:00 pm — 1:30 pm

Betting on Blockchain Consensus with Fantômette

Sarah Azouvi, PhD researcher, UCL

Lunch 1:30 pm — 2:30 pm

2:30 pm — 3:00 pm

Consistency guarantees of different blockchain algorithms and their relation to scalability concerns

Lucianna Kiffer, PhD Researcher, Northeastern University

3:00 pm — 3:30 pm

Hashgraph – Gossip about gossip, virtual voting and proxy staking

Greg Scullard, Lead Developer Advocate, Hashgraph

3:30 pm — 4:00 pm

Lay Down the Common Metrics: Evaluating Proof-of-Work Consensus Protocols' Security

Ren Zhang, Researcher at Nervos and PhD Researcher at KU Leuven

Coffee break 4:00 pm — 4:30 pm

4:30 pm — 5:30 pm

Working group I - Multilayer implementation of blockchain systems

Linus Gasser, Lead Software Engineer, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

4:30 pm — 5:30 pm

Working group II - Hands on analysis of the Bitcoin UTXO set

Sergi Delgado Segura, PhD Researcher, Autonomous University of Barcelona

5:30 pm — 6:30 pm

Working group I - Multilayer implementation of blockchain systems

Linus Gasser, Lead Software Engineer, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

5:30 pm — 6:30 pm

Working group III - Treasury: decentralized community controlled mechanism for sustainable funding of the cryptocurrency development and maintenance

Roman Oliynikov, Research fellow at Input Output HK (IOHK)

6:30 pm — 6:40 pm

Closing remarks

6:40 pm — 7:00 pm

Apograf: Curated Scientific Insight

Kirill Kharitonenko, Apograf Product Owner, Research Institute Moscow, Vasily Kharin, Researcher, Research Institute

7:00 pm — 10:00 pm

Social activity

9:20 am — 9:30 am

Day II Intro

9:30 am — 10:00 am

Fraud Proofs: Maximising Light Client Security and Scaling Blockchains with Dishonest Majorities

Mustafa Al-Bassam, PhD researcher, UCL

10:00 am — 10:30 am

Scalable Bias-resistant Distributed Randomness

Ewa Syta, Assistant Professor, Trinity College, Connecticut

10:30 am — 11:00 am

OmniLedger: A Secure, Scale-Out, Decentralized Ledger via Sharding

Philipp Jovanovic , Postdoctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

11:00 am — 11:30 am

Value-Centric Blockchain: Scale-out, Decentralized, and Flexible by Design

Zhijie Ren, Postdoctoral Researcher, Delft University of Technology

Coffee break 11:30 am — 12:00 pm

12:00 pm — 12:30 pm

Improvements to Thunder Token

Yue Guo, PhD student, Cornell University

12:30 pm — 1:00 pm

PolyShard: Coded Sharding Achieves Linearly Scaling Efficiency and Security Simultaneously

Mingchao Yu, Staff Engineer, Dolby Laboratories

Lunch 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm

2:00 pm — 2:30 pm

Ostraka: A Scale-out Bitcoin node

Alex Manuskin, MSc student, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

2:30 pm — 3:00 pm

Split-Scale: Scaling Bitcoin by Partitioning the UTXO Space

Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz, PhD student, Bogazici University Istanbul

3:00 pm — 3:30 pm

Dietcoin: Shortcutting the Bitcoin verification process for your smartphone

Pierre-Louis Roman, PhD Researcher, University of Rennes

3:30 pm — 4:00 pm

Panel discussion - Layer I scaling: Trade-offs to consider

Greg Scullard, Lead Developer Advocate, Hashgraph, Mustafa Al-Bassam, PhD researcher, UCL, Kogias Eleftherios Kokoris, PhD Student, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Mingchao Yu, Staff Engineer, Dolby Laboratories

4:00 pm — 4:15 pm

Closing remarks

4:00 pm — 10:00 pm

Social activity

17 November, Sat
18 November, Sun