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Didn't get to catch most of the talks at #SBC19 (Stanford Blockchain Conference), so I'm going to post up notes for the talks I find interesting. Here goes.
Building MimbleWimble/Grin, by Quintin Le Sceller. Good overview of Grin and its core building blocks (not just the MimbleWimble protocol—there's a lot more to it.) gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
QuisQuis, a New Design for Anonymous Cryptocurrencies by @prastudy14. A very interesting cryptographic scheme, an alternative to Cryptonote / Zerocoin. Still more of a research project, but cool ideas around updateable public keys. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
Urkel Trees, an optimized key-value store Merkle-tree-like thing for use in @HNS, presented by @boymanjor (great first talk!). Basically simpler than Merkle Patricia Trees and better optimized for on-disk storage and fast updates. Plus has an awesome name. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
Fixing Thunderella, by @ElaineRShi of @ThunderProtocol. Their consensus protocol, despite 70+ pages of exhaustive correctness proofs, relied on a synchrony assumption that failed in real-world testing. How they fixed it, and produced a new network model: gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
That's all for day 1. Will be back at it tomorrow... 💤
And day 2! Saw many of the talks on day 2 in person, shoutouts to @danrobinson's talk on the scourge of HTLCs, @davidvorick's talk on ASIC manufacturing. Will run through a few of the talks I missed.
How to improve multi-hop payment channel networks, by @pedrorechez. Turns out that Lightning leaks tons of privacy info and is vulnerable to malicious users stealing routing fees (by sandwiching honest users). Solution: ECDSA scriptless scripts. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
Formal verification for Ethereum smart contracts by @MartinLundfall. Martin gives an overview of formally specifying and verifying smart contracts, informed by his experience with verifying @MakerDAO. Also drops some smart contract development wisdom. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
Onto day 3. @SarahAzouvi presents Fantômette, a PoS betting-based protocol. Weaves together VRFs, VDFs, and blockDAG structures a la PHANTOM to create an incentive compatible PoS consensus protocol. Cool seeing so many research ideas remixed together. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
Next up, @zkproofs presents on ZEXE, a shiny new scheme for decentralized private computation. Unfortunately we mortals are not smart enough to comprehend ZEXE in all its glory, but Pratyush simplifies the ideas behind it to implement a private DEX. Oh my! gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
And finally, @VitalikButerin presents on Ethereum 2.0, the new sharded + PoS + FFG'd version of Ethereum. Explains the Beacon Chain design, LMD GHOST (fork choice), FFG, crosslinks, and further research. You should definitely ask him when Eth 2.0 drops. gist.github.com/Haseeb-Qureshi…
And that's a wrap from me. You can view the program for #sbc19 here: cyber.stanford.edu/sbc19
And all of the videos themselves here: youtube.com/channel/UCV-51…
And all of the videos themselves here: youtube.com/channel/UCV-51…
