Blockchain researchers debate future of consensus technology at IBM conference

Rage Comment : IBM has always been a thought leader and pioneer in the field of emerging technologies. As people can foresee, the Ethereum blockchain hard fork really began to shake people's confidence in the consensus mechanism. Everyone wants to know what this technology that once brought unprecedented ecstasy will look like for people moving forward. So IBM once again held a special seminar to provide a platform for everyone to exchange ideas and stimulate the interest of the academic community in it.

Translation: Annie_Xu

More than 40 researchers gathered at an IBM symposium in Chicago this week to discuss the future of consensus, the governance mechanism for blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

However, frequenters of blockchain conferences might think that the main purpose of IBM’s conference is to teach technology novices. The theme of the conference is Distributed Cryptocurrencies and Consensus Ledgers (DCCL), which includes high-level academic exchanges and aims to promote exchanges between cutting-edge technology developers.

Attendees included well-known cryptocurrency researchers Aviv Zohar and Ittay Eyal.

The conference was hosted by Christian Cachin, an IBM researcher, participant in the Hyperledger Project and president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).

“The audience of this conference is mainly academics with high knowledge of consensus protocols and blockchain security technologies, and most of them are active in the field.”

The purpose of the IBM workshop was to provide participants with an opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of various consensus protocols, including the so-called "Nakamoto consensus," named after Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Jude Nelson

Jude Nelson, an attendee from New York-based lab Blockstack Labs, said the conference was intended to spark interest in blockchain technology in the academic field.

Nelson pointed out some of the topics of the meeting, including separating Coinbase’s block rewards from the blockchain system and building a more efficient chat mechanism.

The symposium was an adjunct to a conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and was devoted to broad principles of distributed computing.

Exchange of ideas

Earlier this year, IBM called on the computer science community to join cryptocurrency research and development. The symposium was designed to support this initiative, highlighting how its underlying protocols can help institutions reach a unified path.

In particular, IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, has collected relevant literature on topics including distributed consensus among independent nodes, consensus ledger mechanisms, Nakamoto consensus, proof-of-work-based protocols, and more.

The timing of this conference is very special: the recent Ethereum hard fork has caused quite a lot of controversy, with two independent blockchains corresponding to two different ideologies; therefore, many people are deeply discussing the nature of the consensus mechanism.