Consensus is for everybody

Tess Rinearson (Tendermint Core)

15:50–16:30 Thursday, 7 November 2019

Location: Hall A6

Emerging Tech

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Who is this presentation for?

Anyone who’s heard about consensus through blockchain buzzwords and wants to know what these ideas are really about and programmers new to distributed systems

Level

Beginner

Description

Maybe you’ve tried to get a group of computers to come to a consensus. Computer scientists have studied this problem for decades, but it’s gained attention again recently as blockchains and cryptocurrencies rely on consensus algorithms to operate safely.

Tess Rinearson introduces you to the consensus problem and some of the most important algorithms that address it. She outlines some of the more academic options used in blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. And she details both the mechanics of these algorithms and the trade-offs between them so that you can walk away with a more intuitive understanding of how they work and why they matter.

Prerequisite knowledge

A basic understanding of computer networking and bitcoin (useful but not required)

What you'll learn

Gain a sense of the landscape of consensus algorithms, including the mechanics of some of the most important consensus algorithms
Understand why these algorithms are important for blockchains and which ones are being used how

Tess Rinearson

Tendermint Core

Tess Rinearson works on Tendermint, a proof-of-stake consensus engine which powers a variety of blockchain projects, including the Cosmos Network. She’s worked in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space since early 2015, focusing largely on storage and protocol problems for permissioned blockchains (and writing a popular bitcoin explainer—using emoji—along the way). Before falling into the blockchain hole, she was a full stack engineer at Medium.