Room 206 (2nd floor, badged access)
8 March 2019 - 10h00
An overview of the Tezos blockchain
by Mathias Bourgoin from Nomadic Labs
Abstract: Blockchains, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, are distributed and decentralized ledgers. Bitcoin was, in 2009, the first blockchain, allowing financial transactions using a cryptocurrency. Then new blockchains such as Ethereum introduced smart contracts, small computer programs running in the blockchain and Dapps, distributed applications running on the blockchain (through smart contracts). These blockchains are based on an energy consuming 'proof of work' consensus algorithm and their governance is informal and can lead to hard forks of the blockchain.
In this talk, I will present Tezos, an innovative self-amending blockchain that
- provides a formal on-chain governance mechanism to activate upgrades without the need for hard forks.
- focuses on security (through formal verification) and provides an environment to run formally verifiable smart contracts.
- replaces the classic 'proof of work' consensus algorithm with a modern, resilient and energy efficient (thus ecological) 'proof of stake' algorithm.
