Motion: Today’s blockchains can’t increase TPS without taking a hit on decentralization, II (Evan Shapiro vs. Anatoly Yakovenko)

Guests:

Evan Shapiro (@evanashapiro)
Anatoly Yakovenko (@aeyakovenko)

Host:

Richard Yan (@gentso09)

Today’s motion is “Today’s blockchains can’t increase TPS without taking a hit on decentralization.”

This is a follow-up debate, or you can think of it as a re-match. Previously Emre from O(1) Labs also debated Anatoly from Solana on this very topic on the show. So make sure to check that out if you’re interested.

Here are some of the topics we covered:
* the inherent shortcoming of proof-of-stake in guaranteeing the canonical chain for a new full node
* why some chains have been designed to disallow rollback beyond certain point
* How Evan thinks faster synching process for new full nodes will allow further decentralization
* Why Anatoly thinks trustless synching doesn’t solve the Byzantine Generals Problem

If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.

If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.

Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.

Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):

• Solana: https://solana.com/
• Coda: https://www.codaprotocol.com/
• Weak subjectivity explained: https://academy.binance.com/glossary/weak-subjectivity
• Long range attacks: https://blog.positive.com/rewriting-history-a-brief-introduction-to-long-range-attacks-54e473acdba9
• Coda article on mental model of Scalability-per-unit-of-Decentralization: https://codaprotocol.com/blog/solving-the-scalability-trilemma
• Byzantine general's problem: https://medium.com/coinmonks/a-note-from-anthony-if-you-havent-already-please-read-the-article-gaining-clarity-on-key-787989107969

Debater bios:

Evan is CEO of O(1) labs which operates Mina protocol, previously known as Coda protocol. He used to be an engineer at Mozilla and Personal Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Anatoly is founder and CEO of Solana, a layer-1 public blockchain built for scalability without sacrificing decentralization or security, and in particular, without sharding. He was previously a software engineer at Dropbox, Mesosphere and Qualcomm.