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AI systems are breaking an internet that was designed at human-scale — by making it cheaper than ever to coordinate, transact, and generate voice, video, and text that are increasingly indistinguishable from human activity. We’re already beset w
What should a modern blockchain protocol look like? In this talk, Roger Wattenhofer (Anza and ETH Zurich) discusses Alpenglow, Solana’s new consensus protocol. Alpenglow features some interesting innovations, such as its voting protocol, resulting in a fast finalization latency. Alpenglow achieves a low latency by finalizing blocks in a single round of voting if 80% of the stake is participating, and in two rounds if only 60% of the stake is responsive. Alpenglow’s “20+20” resilience allows the protocol to operate effectively even under harsh network conditions, tolerating up to 20% adversarial stake and an additional 20% non-responsive stake. Other contributions include a low-variance sampling strategy.
About the presenter
Roger is head of research at Anza, the Solana-focused software development firm. He is also a full professor at the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He received his doctorate in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. Previously, he worked multiple years at Microsoft Research, at Brown University, and at Macquarie University. Roger Wattenhofer’s research interests include a variety of algorithmic and systems aspects in computer science and information technology, currently mostly machine learning, distributed systems, and theory of networks.
About a16z crypto research
a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet.
More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research
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