Ethereum publishes the first version of the Casper update
Danny Ryan, the developer behind Casper FFG, published a new version 0.1.0 "first version" of the code for Github last Tuesday, noting that "v0.1.0 marks us more clearly the releases to help customers and external auditors to Easier to track the contract and changes. "
FFG (Friendly Finality Gadget), is the first iteration of Casper and possibly will be followed by others. According to the official repository, Casper FFG is designed as a superposition or upper layer for the existing blockchain under the PoW algorithm (or any string with "some block proposal mechanism"). There are "epochs" of a certain specific length (currently, 50 blocks) during which the validators "vote" in the chain that they believe is the canonically unique.
When two consecutive "epochs" achieve> 2/3 votes by weight, the first of these epochs is "finalized". This approach is inspired by existing BFT consensus algorithms such as PBFT and Tendermint, but FFG is simpler in the sense that it only requires one type of message (one vote).
Similarly Ryan clarified through the Gitter network that under normal operating conditions, there are no disparities between the PoW fork option and the FFG hybrid fork option (PoW / PoS). The two fork choice rules can only differ if 51% of the miners or 51% of the validators are defective.
He also indicated in Reddit that "more than just the research team is using the contract now - auditors, client developers, etc. - so we wanted to start issuing clearer versions and change records to help everyone stay organized."
The move indicates that momentum is being built behind the protocol change (migration from Pow to PoS), since Ethereum software clients can start writing the same in their individual coding languages and test it.
Once implemented, Casper FFG uses validators to update the general ledger through a voting system in which users, sometimes called executors, deposit amounts of Ether, which run the risk of losing if they try to deceive, thus originating the migration from Pow to PoS algorithms.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, addressed the Casper update at a conference in Toronto last week, calling it one of the happiest experiences in Ethereum in a fairly short time.
In its initial stages, Casper will retain Ethereum's current work test protocol (PoW) to do most of the heavy lifting, using participation tests (PoS) to validate "control points" periodically. Because the network can only handle so many validation nodes, the minimum deposit will begin at 1500 Ether.
For now, this first stage of Casper has to be audited and the network can not implement it until more codes have been written for Ethereum clients, the programs that users download to execute the cryptocurrency protocol. Since Casper will not be compatible with previous versions of Ethereum, it will be difficult.
Finally, Ryan said at a developer meeting last month :
"As these pieces of the puzzle are closer and closer to completion, I'll point out that it's time to start talking about the fork's block numbers."
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