Vlad Zamfir: Bringing Ethereum Towards Proof-of-Stake with Casper

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 in this episode: 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 Episode links: Introducing Casper - Ethereum Blog Review of Casper, Ethereum’s proposed Proof of Stake Algorithm Casper Protocol Specification Slasher, Ghost and Other Developments in Proof-of-Stake Epicenter Bitcoin Episode 58 with Vitalik Buterin on Proof-of-Stake This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/105