@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu The upcoming protocol changes are the "outcome of research". They are conceptually very simple and well understood and aim at making the protocol less complex and more robust - so no, they don't need to go through an extensive period of research.
It was pretty obvious early ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... on, that some of the concepts of multiverse were extremely promising. Accordingly, last August we decided to reimplement the whole ledger state to be prepared for an eventual switch of consensus mechanisms down the line.
At the same time, we tried to maintain as much of ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... the original FPC/FCOB version as possible (simply to not jump the gun and jeopardize the success of coordicide).
In that process, the two versions (Multiverse / FPC) were converging more and more until they eventually became one and the same thing where FPC/FCOB acts as ...
The combination of the two approaches allowed us to get rid of the biggest concern (metastable states) while maintaining the simplicity and robustness of Multiverse.
In the process of coding the prototype, we realized ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... that the FCOB part of FPC is really not very elegant. It doesn't just add a lot of ugly complexity to the code which costs us a huge amount of TPS but it also slows down confirmations by 4-5 seconds.
While testing the devnet we came across an edge case in the FCOB part ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... of FPC that caused some issues for nodes in rare situations. It was a consequence of combining Multiverse with FPC/FCOB which was originally never intended.
It would have been pretty easy to fix these issues by slightly modifying the FPC statements to include rejected ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... Branches as well, but considering that we wanted to actually get rid of FCOB anyway, we decided to not waste time into fixing something that we wanted to ultimately remove.
Instead we decided to switch to a new version of FPC (called "FPC on a set") which we developed in ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... parallel and which is tailored to Multiverse. It still uses a decentralized source of randomness to break metastable states but it applies the random threshold at a different step in the protocol.
The new and updated version of the prototype that should hopefully be ...
@alexxxxx85@dennisnagpal1@SenfdaTzu ... ready in a few weeks will not only solve the named problem but it will also massively boost the finalization speed of transactions and be MUCH simpler and easier to understand and reason about.
There is still room for some minor optimizations but with this next update we ...
Move is the first virtual machine since the EVM to be adopted by a growing number of independent L1 projects.
What makes it so special and why is it destined to replace the EVM as the de-facto standard for smart contracts in the crypto-space?
Are you ready? Let's dig in!🧵
1. Move is the first VM that leverages "linear logic" (the logic of quantum information theory) to model a "virtual universe of digital assets" that is governed by conservation laws and that enforces that assets can never be duplicated or lost directly on the "language level".
2. In most other VMs, smart contract security relies heavily on developers following best practices.
One slip-up in managing token approvals or re-entrancy guards and user funds are at risk - even years after using a compromised contract and when keeping funds in a cold-wallet.
So it's finally time for part 2 of the update, in which I will explain how the reactive package allows us to merge metadata and logic to eliminate the problems discussed in the previous thread by getting rid of our 'external propagation logic'.
I will split the thread into several different segments to make it easier to associate the attached pictures with their respective text.
Since we plan to create blocks that act like 'interacting cells', we first need to create a mechanism that allows them to communicate.
For this purpose, we mimic the function of a 'receptor', which is a chemical structure on the membrane of cells that can bind to so-called 'ligands' to release a 'messenger'.
@Plinz I personally think that modeling multiway systems as rewrite systems that operate on a global continuous vector of data is a bit non-intuitive (and also pretty inefficient in code as you have to essentially duplicate the entire vector for each branch that you spawn).
In the ...
@Plinz ... context of Wolframs work, I even think that it leads to questionable conclusions like the proposal to explain the wave function collapse as a Knuth–Bendix completion of the multiway graph, which fails to explain things like Schrödingers Cat where different quantum states ...
@Plinz ... can lead to vastly different macroscopic outcomes.
A slightly different take on causal multiway systems that is also closer to the way we perceive the world is to model them as an evolution of "interacting substates / particles", rather than a continuous sequence of symbols.
I have lately received a number of messages, asking about the security of IOTA's new consensus mechanism in situations like network splits.
Since these questions seem to originate in factually wrong statements of a critic, I want to answer this question publicly.
(1/20)🧵👇
To understand how IOTA handles this type of situation, we first need to understand what a network split is.
It is a situation where the network is split into two (or more) disconnected partitions where each partition can only see their respective set of issued messages.
(2/20)
Most splits are the result of faulty network infrastructure causing temporary interruptions of connectivity.
Redundant hardware and connections have made large-scale network splits increasingly rare but smaller, locally confined partitions are still relatively common.
Apart from a lot of references to other papers, it contains only very hand wavy statements. I don't think they name a single concrete algorithm in the entire document.
@durerus@Conste11ation@Vrom14286662 It was promised that they would release updated papers and information, that would answer some of the questions I had, but I think this was delayed.
I wouldn't rule out that they work on something legit and I would give them the benefit of the doubt but everything that I ...
I think it's time for a short update around our progress on coordicide:
A few weeks ago we merged the refactored consensus code base and we have been running it in an internal testnet since then.
After fixing a lot of bugs, the node looks increasingly stable (we also found ...
... the memory leak that we were fighting with for almost 2 weeks - people who closely follow the development process on github will know what I mean).
The only remaining thing for the prototype to be feature complete in a first MVP version (apart from getting rid of ...
... possible remaining bugs) is the chain switching, which allows nodes to automatically recover after i.e. having being eclipsed / in a minority partition.
Me and Andrea started working on this 2 weeks ago but we had to pause and first change the way we manage state to ...