Visit by Ralph Holz

Prof. Ralph Holz from Syndey University will visit SUTD on 7 Nov. At 3pm in LT3, he will give a public talk on the following topic.

Title: Consensus, security and the network – measuring Blockchain

Over the last years, blockchains have developed into a mainstream technology that entire industry sectors are talking about. The latest generation even supports smart contracts – programs that are executed by all participants and that may govern everything from simple transactions to the setup of organisations. Beyond the hype, however, we find that there is little deployment beyond the two most prominent examples, Bitcoin and Ethereum. In this talk, we are going to explore some of the reasons. In particular, we show that the P2P networks that underlie blockchains impact their functionality in decisive ways. We look at dependability and abortion of transactions, both of which are crucial for enterprises, and we inspect the network structure and its influence on transaction execution. We present some early numbers from more than 2,500 scans of a blockchain network. Finally, we discuss some research directions that could prove fruitful in a number of systems, blockchains or beyond.