The first computers were programmed in “machine code”. Each kind of system had a different code, and these codes were low-level and inexpressive: programs were long sequences of very simple instructions, incompressible to anyone who had not written them. Nowadays we are able to use higher-level languages like C, Java and Haskell to program systems. The same languages can be…

Today IOHK releases Plutus Platform, a smart contracts language for the Cardano blockchain. You can try out Plutus online, with no need to download or install anything, via Plutus Playground. Plutus Platform is open source. You can find code, documentation, and sources here. IOHK is unique among cryptocurrency companies for its insistence on basing its development on peer…

Building on last week’s post by Professor Aggelos Kiayias, IOHK’s chief scientist, I want to use this post to discuss another choice we made when designing Cardano’s reward mechanism. The mechanism is designed to give an incentive to stakeholders to ‘do the right thing’ and participate in the protocol in a way that ensures its smooth, efficient and secure operation. As was…

In a proof of stake (PoS) blockchain protocol, the ledger is maintained by the stakeholders that hold assets in that ledger. This allows PoS blockchains to use less energy compared with proof of work (PoW) or other types of blockchain protocols. Nevertheless, this requirement imposes a burden on stakeholders. It requires a good number of them to be online and maintain…

A third major paper from the Ouroboros line of research was presented at a leading computer security and cryptography event yesterday, a recognition of the contribution the work makes to the field of computer science. The paper, Ouroboros Genesis, was presented by researcher Christian Badertscher at the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, held in…