Global universities join BSafe test network, Bitcoin testing matures to prevent Mt.Gox and TheDAO incidents from happening again

A team of researchers is encouraging universities to set up bitcoin nodes as part of an effort to allow students and professors to experiment and test the network.

The private test network, called BSafe, is designed to help spread the technology while preventing future incidents like Mt. Gox or The DAO.

“Most developers in this world believe that [bitcoin’s] basic cryptographic algorithm is ideal and can be used as a black box,” said Shin’ichiro Matsuo, co-founder of the BSafe Network.

Matsuo believes that Bitcoin, and all crypto-financial projects, need a more diverse group of researchers to explore and analyze the technology.

“We need to make a more precise assessment of blockchain technology,” Matsuo said.

The BSafe network will also provide a communication channel between academia and Bitcoin Core developers for the many bitcoin test networks that can be used by alternative blockchains to test code before it is actually deployed on the bitcoin blockchain.

Since the network was launched in February this year, five nodes have been deployed: three in Japan, one in the UK, and one at MIT. Matsuo's goal is to set up 30 university nodes by the end of this year. In the future, three university nodes will be set up in each country.

Seeking more ideas

For Matsuo, the main purpose is to bring anthropologists, sociologists, scientists and legal experts into the Bitcoin community.

But for Bitcoin to become a legitimate technological solution for all different types of consumers, neutral, unbiased research is needed.

“The community today is a meritocracy, and much of it is based on whether you can code,” said Cory Fields, a Bitcoin Core developer who helped BSafe set up the MIT node.

This is a typical governance structure within open source communities, which can be a good thing in some ways but can be really harmful in others.

“Just because I can code doesn’t mean I know anything about economics and the consequences of economic policy. It’s perfectly reasonable for a responsible academic to say I can’t code, but that policy is disastrous in the future or that the consequences are worth investigating.”

Bringing in academics is a very positive thing. Fields likens it to the development of the internet, which came from a project that was originally designed to connect all universities together.

According to Fields, a group of nodes working together can measure things that were previously difficult to learn. He cited block propagation time (the time it takes to broadcast a block verification to the rest of the nodes) as an example.

Cultivating Talent

Besides, organizers say, college is a great way to develop talent in lucrative fields.

“In the blockchain field, there is a real lack of expertise,” said Pindar Wong, co-founder of BSafe and a well-known internet pioneer and Bitcoin enthusiast.

He added: “Those who understand advanced math are a special group of people. There are probably less than 100 of them who are currently interested in Bitcoin at a cryptographic level.”

That makes the space more appealing to those who may have different interpretations of bitcoin’s pros and cons, and is close to Wong’s heart. Bitcoin, as a protocol built for innovation, attracts entrepreneurs who aren’t always the most secure, he said.

However, when it comes to handling consumer funds, security and reliability in the protocol are extremely important. There are also barriers to bringing new people into the community.

“The thing that frustrates developers is that understanding Bitcoin and blockchain comes in stages.”

When Bitcoin was first learned, outside researchers came up with the idea of ​​rewriting the consensus code to eliminate certain fights. But these researchers were often unaware that those rewrites had already been attempted years before and ultimately failed.

'Bigger safety net'

Another advantage of setting up a testbed network is finding vulnerabilities in your code before they cause problems.

This process of testing code to ensure it does what it's supposed to do is called code proofing, and according to Fields, it's an especially important step in deploying code in many industries.

As in the debate following the DAO hack, one camp argued that since users came up with the idea for The DAO, they should be responsible for reviewing the code. However, not everyone involved in The DAO has the technical ability to review the code.

"One way to do that is to certify the code, which provides a bigger safety net for the end user," Fields said.

But so far, the tools to test and prove these new blockchain protocols have not been created.

“The DAO and the Ethereum hard fork have helped highlight the importance of correctness and security of applications and the protocols they rely on,” Wong said. “In addition, academia can play a role in facilitating productive discussions.”

Testing platforms can bring this to the community.

BSafe isn’t the only bitcoin testbed project being set up, and the community is becoming more diverse.

“Like the Internet in the 1980s, blockchain technology is still immature; there are still debates on many aspects of blockchain,” Matsuo said.

He continued: "We need to do a lot of experiments to find a good balance; these sandboxes can help find that balance."