Rob Viglione: SPECTRE as a Distributed Ledger Scaling Solution

Rob Viglione, co-founder of ZenCash, a zero-knowledge-based cryptocurrency and secure messaging service, will be talking to us about SPECTRE, a novel implementation of the directed acyclic graph (DAG) protocol. (Say that five times fast.)

One of the big dilemmas in blockchain today is how to scale the protocol. Several scaling proposals have been put forth, including Lightning. A more controversial proposal is SPECTRE, put together by a group of researchers in Israel.

SPECTRE is a DAG-based protocol for a permissionless distributed ledger that promises high throughput and fast confirmation times while maintaining the same high level of security as Bitcoin. Existing non-SPECTRE implementations of DAG include IOTA, Hashgraph and Byteball.

Rob will touch on existing scaling solutions. After that, he will go on to explain how SPECTRE works, how it differs from other DAG-based architectures, and why it may be a promising way to scale blockchains.

Why is Rob talking about SPECTRE? How does he know so much? Because ZenCash recently entered into a partnership with IOHK, the blockchain research and engineering company led by Charles Hoskinson, who is also an advisor to ZenCash.

Part of that partnership involves ZenCash implementing a treasury system designed by IOHK researchers at the University of Edinburgh. A second part involves ZenCash writing software for implementing SPECTRE. (IOHK is writing up the specifications and ZenCash will handle coding.) And, if all systems are go, ZenCash may even upgrade to the new protocol.

READING MATERIAL

SPECTRE: Serialization of Proof-of-Work Events, Confirming Transactions via Recursive Elections (https://medium.com/@avivzohar/the-spectre-protocol-7dbbebb707b5)

What is a Directed Acyclic Graph? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtWUJtnQbKs)

Interview with Charles and Rob on partnership (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGzhJkAnUmQ) AGENDA

6:30 - 7PM - Networking and setting in (BYOM)
7:00 - 8PM - Presentation and Q&A
8:00 - 8:30PM - More networking
8:30 - 11:30PM - Late night discussions at TBA