samlaf

Recording of FTF consensus ep 3 is now up! youtube.com/watch?v=E2EyRg… Thanks again @kartik1507 ! Really fun session.

Really reminds me of the RUM conjecture, but for bandwidth instead of storage. daslab.seas.harvard.edu/rum-conjecture/

Here's another Claude generated visualization of the tradeoff.

Mommy a new consensus-bandwidth trilemma just dropped!

You've heard of 3f+1 and 5f+1, but what about 4f+1? (if you want to reach a data expansion rate of ~1, look no further 👀)

Why are there no documentaries that focus on 2008 money market funds breaking the buck?

How is MPP similar/different from x402?

@RyanSAdams How did Aptos get in there and not Sui 🤔

THEY DID IT. The SEC and CFTC just dropped a landmark document that officially classifies crypto assets. They're actually telling us which crypto assets are securities and which ones aren't - by name! THIS IS SOMETHING GENSLER REFUSED TO DO (he focused on prosecuting crypto out of existence) This rule doc gives crypto many of the benefits of the clarity bill - it lifts us out of the gray market - it gives every asset a path. It's almost like the Clarity act just passed by way of regulator. (of course, the actual clarity act will harden all this into legislation and make it irreversible in the event we get another Gensler, we still want it) This rule says there's 5 categories for crypto assets: 1) Digital Commodities - assets tied to a functional, decentralized crypto system (e.g., BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA, DOGE). Not securities. (yes, they name them on page 14) 2) Digital Collectibles - NFTs, meme coins, artwork tokens, in-game items. Not securities (fractionalized collectibles may be an exception). 3) Digital Tools - membership tokens, credentials, domain names (e.g., ENS). Not securities. 4) Stablecoins - payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act are not securities. Other stablecoins, it depends. 5) Digital Securities - tokenized versions of traditional securities. Like tokenized stocks. Always securities. Amazing! This makes so much sense I can't believe it's coming from a regulator. No more enforcement threats to Ethereum developers and crypto exchanges. How about the Howey test? More common sense! If an issuer makes specific promises of managerial efforts from which buyers expect profits, the offering is a security until those promises are fulfilled. Then it's a commodity. The asset itself was never the security, the deal around it was. (E.g. XRP was a security pre launch, became a commodity after). How about stuff like staking and mining? Mining? Not a securities transaction. Staking? Also not a securities transaction, that includes custodial and liquid staking even with LSTs! How about wrapping BTC? Not a securities transaction. Airdrops? NOT SECURITIES. NO MORE GEO BANS PROTECTING AMERICANS from free airdrops. Remember this is a joint doc from the SEC and CFTC, They're actually cooperating on this, no internal strife, this is binding to both. SEC regulates $80-100 trillion assets CFTC regulates $5-10 trillion assets Both of the world's largest capital markets are showing us that crypto assets are here to stay and they're welcome alongside traditional assets. Every country will follow. This is the biggest move toward legitimacy I've seen in all my time in crypto. Maybe bigger than the genius act since is covers all crypto assets. Well done @MichaelSelig and @SECPaulSAtkins. And especially well done to the indefatigable @HesterPeirce. Her fingerprints are all over this, couldn't have happened without her eight years of principles-based curiosity.

From rollup training wheels to startup training wheels.

Answer is: - Lamport/Shostak/Pease 1982 (the Byzantine Generals paper) gave the first protocol for Byzantine broadcast tolerating f < n in the synchronous model with signatures/PKI. But their protocol was expensive — exponential message complexity, because it involved recursively relaying and re-signing messages to depth f. - Dolev/Strong 1983 solved the same problem much more efficiently — polynomial message complexity. It's essentially the "better version" of the same result. - Vitalik restated it in mdoern terms.

Prep quiz3: Can you state the relationship between PSL (byzantine's general problem paper) -> Dolev-Strong -> Vitalik's 99% Fault Tolerant Consensus? vitalik.eth.limo/general/2018/0…

Answer is -- Paper established a complete picture for Byzantine broadcast in the synchronous model: - Impossibility: f ≥ n/3 is impossible without authentication/signatures - Upper bound without PKI: f < n/3 is solvable — the "Oral Messages" algorithm (OM(m)), which uses recursive majority voting - Upper bound with PKI: f < n is solvable — the "Signed Messages" algorithm (SM(m)), which uses recursive relaying with signatures

Prep quiz 2: can you state the 2 results proved in the famous Byzantine Generals Problem paper?

And finally the broadcast cheat sheet tying everything together. Will need a few more posts to fully expand on this.

Provability hierarchy

Wrote new post in preparation for today's FTF consensus ep4 session, going over: - terminating broadcast vs binary consensus equivalence - broadcast liveness hierarchy - easy PKI-based solns for consistent/reliable broadcast - PKI and provable broadcast - view change triggers

Reminder that this is happening today at 1pm! Also DM me if interested in joining our tg group where we discuss all sorts of distributed system things.

@kartik1507 @ittaia Nice hadn’t thought of post-quantum. Although lean-vm might solve that issue soon enough :)

@samlafer @ittaia If we want to be signature-free/post-quantum secure, Bracha is still the best protocol tolerating t < n/3 faults. So, from that standpoint, I think it is very relevant.

A Decentralized Thoughts post on the key principles underlying partial synchrony BFT: decentralizedthoughts.github.io/2025-02-14-par… with @ittaia