Testing PoW Consensus Algorithm Security with Ren Zhang from Nervos

In this week’s episode, we revisit the topic of consensus algorithms with Ren Zhang, a researchers at Nervos and previously at imec-COSIC (KU Leuven). We chat about an earlier work he did on evaluating PoW consensus protocols security and explore his more recent work on NC-Max - a consensus protocol that breaks the throughput limit and enables the full utilization of the nodes’ bandwidth in confirming transactionsHere are a few of the links we mention in the interview: Consensus Algorithms & HotStuff with Ittai AbrahamMajority is not Enough:Bitcoin Mining is VulnerableFruitChains: A Fair BlockchainRSK technologySubchains: A Technique to Scale Bitcoin and Improve the User ExperienceLay Down the Common Metrics: Evaluating Proof-of-Work Consensus Protocols' Security by Ren Zhang & Bart PreneelNC-Max: Breaking the Throughput Limit of Nakamoto Consensus by Ren Zhang, Dingwei Zhang, Quake Wang, Jan Xie and Bart PreneelSquirRL - A recent paper extending the "Lay Down the Common Metrics" paperMarkov decision process on Wikipedia- Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from ParadigmPrism: Deconstructing the Blockchain to Approach Physical LimitsAlan Szepieniec on Hash Functions & Supersonic SNARKsMore on Nervos:For the UTXO Programming Model of Nervos, the best starting point is Ren’s colleague Xuejie Xiao's blog.An explanation of Nervos DAOAn introduction of the Virtual Machine and smart contract support Thanks to our sponsor Least Authority. Least Authority is a security consulting company known for their dedication to pushing the limits on how to build privacy-respecting solutions. They are a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates, cryptographers who specialize in security audits, design specification reviews, and security-by-design. Given that privacy is at the core of their work and mission, least authority recognizes the importance of privacy in DeFi and other decentralizing technologies and the role it plays in preserving balance of power. Least Authority is supporting this through a growing list of security reviews, building distributed systems and regular contributions to open source software projects.To find out about their work, visit leastauthority.com to check out their security audit reports.And get in touch at [email protected] if you want to talk about the security of your DeFi project. If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjACatch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_gRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledgeOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ Read transcript