Outstanding Research Questions
Hello! Welcome to the list of current CBC Casper research problems. These problems range from partially-explored to mostly-explore, with everything in-between. In our opinion, they're all wonderfully interesting and thinking about them is a wonderful way to start understanding CBC Casper.
If you're interested in thinking about these problems, have some questions, or some ideas, please reach out.
Validator set rotation is an important consideration for many consensus protocols generated by CBC Casper. For example, a static validator set is clearly unsatisfactory in the case of a public proof-of-stake blockchain, and as such Casper the Friendly Ghost must support validator set rotation.
Luckily, validator set rotation has been specified for a blockchain data structure, and works quite nicely with CBC Casper. An basic overview can be found in the FAQ here.
However, there is not currently a specified method of rotating validators "in the general case." That is, validator set rotation works so well in Casper TFG because of some features specific to the blockchain data structure itself, and thus is different (and unspecified) for other data structures.
To do:
- Specify what is needed from some protocol for it to support validator set rotation.
- For example, validator set rotation in the case of binary consensus, in the most naive way, clearly breaks the safety proof. As such, we may have to specify a "modified binary protocol" where validators come to consensus on n consecutive bits, where the validator set must not be the same for all of them.
- Specify how to rotate validators "in the general case" (with any data structure we might happen to be replicating).
What is liveness? See here in FAQ.
In general, there
So, how do we measure it or show we have liveness.
- Normal liveness
- Etc