Blockchain startup CasperLabs is joining forces with CryptoChicks as co-host and main sponsor of Cryptochicks Hackathon + Blockchain, AI Conference, a major blockchain and AI event to be held at RBC WaterPark Place in Toronto, Canada, from May 31 to June 2.
CasperLabs, a fully decentralized, scalable, new proof-of-stake blockchain, with CEO Medha Parlikar and Lead CBC Casper Architect Vlad Zamfir. The company, acting as an R&D organization, believes in contrarian fashion that it is unnecessary to compromise decentralization in favor of scalability, currently most blockchains that scale have an element of centralization. The solution revolves around the CBC Casper Proof-of-Stake Protocol.
The event will revolve around a panel called “Scaling Web 3.0 – The First Billion Users of Blockchain,” which will host Vlad Zamfir and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin. The two developers will discuss the future of decentralization, blockchain scalability, and the CBC Casper Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Protocol. Live stream is available here.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are probably the only truly decentralized distributed ledger networks, given they are open source, open access and feature a high number of users, global distribution, and lack of control from any single entity. Other blockchains are inclining to adopt forms of centralization (from mild to extreme) in order to ensure a high degree of scalability. This may be achieved either through the voting format, delegation or other similar schema.
However, CasperLabs prefers not to compromise decentralization or the open source ethos in favor of scalability. The startup, which acts as a Research & Development (R&D) organization, is now working on a fully decentralized, sharded, and scalable distributed ledger technology (DLT); that will rely on a PoS consensus algorithm (CBC-Casper) that has been in development since 2014 and builds on decades of research into byzantine fault tolerance. Medha Parlikar, CEO of CasperLabs, a subsidiary of ADAPtive Holdings, explained, “ The technology promises to scale the blockchain without sacrificing decentralization through proof of stake consensus and open and permission-less access. If Blockchains are centralized, there is not much point to using them; storing provenance of data privately is a solved problem, a database would be more appropriate”.
CasperLabs has made significant investments researching the best approach to developing a fully decentralized and scalable blockchain. CBC-Casper is part of CasperLabs immediate roadmap and considered as a potential consensus protocol for Ethereum. Many CasperLabs team members were early investors in Ethereum, not to mention Vlad Zamfir, who is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation.
When asked whether the startup would be ready to further collaborate with Ethereum and other projects, CasperLabs co-founder Mrinal Manohar (who is also CEO of ADAPtive holdings) said, “Linux is pretty great because in spite of the myriad forks, directionally there was a focus to create something great and collaborate, rather than focus on petty competition or palace intrigue. Ethereum was a genius tectonic shift not since replicated in our industry and a lot of us at CasperLabs have been seed investors and supporters of that project since its inception. Our entire code repository on Github is open source and available to everyone. If there is any part of our build that is useful to Ethereum or any project that supports the open source and decentralization ethos, we’d love to share. This is an open invitation. CBC-Casper is an important and evocative technology which needs to be implemented”.
