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