Emin Gün Sirer Discusses Cryptocurrency Academics and Proof-of-Stake

At the Satoshi’s Vision Conference in Tokyo, our Bitcoin.com video host Mike Malley chatted with the Cornell CS professor Emin Gün Sirer about on-chain scaling and the Bitcoin Cash network.

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The Academic Side of Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency Solutions

Emin Gün Sirer is a well-known researcher specializing in computer networking and peer-to-peer systems. Gün Sirer also teaches as a computer scientist professor at Cornell University. The professor has been very vocal during the course of the great scaling debate and is a person who is not afraid to criticize cryptocurrency community actors. At the Satoshi’s Vision Conference Gün Sirer discusses the academic side of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency solutions.

“This field is really exciting because it sits on the intersections of so many others — so it combines elements from systems building, economics, game theory, programming languages at times, and a series of databases. Often a bunch of other elements from the computer science spectrum,” Gün Sirer explains during his discussion with Bitcoin.com.

Building Things That Offer Real World Use Cases

The Cornell professor then explains that his work focuses very much on the implementation side of the industry and building concepts that bring real-world value.

“My particular place in the spectrum is very much towards the implementation side. If I could sort of try to map everyone onto a singular linear scale, where on the right-hand side you have wizard hats, the theoretical people, and on the left-hand side, you have people who build stuff with hard hats. I am very proud of my hard hat; I am very proud of being someone who actually builds things that work,” Gün Sirer emphasizes to Mike Malley during their discussion.

The Year of Proof-of-Stake Consensus Mechanisms

Moreover, Gün Sirer explains that he is excited about new consensus mechanisms and believes there will be a significant shift in the next year and a half.

“My group has been looking at what should the infrastructure of blockchains be. We are at a very interesting time, and people are coming up with new consensus protocols daily — Something I keep an eye out for is new consensus protocols — This coming year, not this particular year but the year after, I suspect will be the year of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols,” Gün Sirer tells our video host.

The ones that exist today are still incredibly complex and even in my field doesn’t feel like they are justified well enough that they secure enough to really ‘bet the farm on.’ In about a year in a half you will see PoS really start to take shape — I’m really excited about that.

During the rest of the video, Emin Gün Sirer discusses node communication and how networks can communicate better. If you want to hear the rest of the Cornell professor’s chat with our host, then make sure you check out the video below.

What do you think about Emin Gün Sirer commentary and his Satoshi’s Vision Conference interview with Bitcoin.com? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Bitcoin.com and Emin Gün Sirer.

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