A masterclass on Cardano from our chief scientist Professor Aggelos Kiayias

This is the latest in a series of the #CardanoWhiteboards from IOHK.

Developing Cardano is no small feat. There is no other project that has ever been built to these parameters, combining peer reviewed cryptographic research with an implementation in highly secure Haskell code. This is not the copy and paste code seen in so many other blockchains. Instead, Cardano was designed with input from a large global team including leading experts and professors in the fields of computer programming languages, network design and cryptography. We are extremely proud of Cardano, which required a months-long meticulous and painstaking development process by our talented engineers.

Prof Aggelos Kiayias is the Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in computer security, information security, applied cryptography and foundations of cryptography with a particular emphasis in blockchain technologies and distributed systems, e-voting and secure multiparty protocols as well as privacy and identity management. He joins IOHK as chief scientist through a long-term consulting agreement between IOHK and the University of Edinburgh, UK, where he is based and continues to do research and teach courses in cyber security and cryptography. Prof Kiayias is also Professor in Residence (gratis) at the University of Connecticut, USA, and Associate Professor of Cryptography and Security (on leave) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Prof Kiayias’s cyber security research over the years has been funded by the Horizon 2020 programme (EU), the European Research Council (EU), the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (Greece), the National Science Foundation (USA), the Department of Homeland Security (USA), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA). He has received an ERC Starting Grant, a Marie Curie fellowship, an NSF Career Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York and he is a graduate of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Athens. He has more than 100 publications in journals and conference proceedings in the area.

He currently serves as the program chair of the Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2017 conference.

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Yes this is the kinda stuff we need more of =)

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Brilliant, this is why I’m confident in this project, many thanks.

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Thank you, @jonmoss for sharing this! I do not have a technical computer background, so I do my best to understand the topic-though it is great how you guys really work to keep these from being too overly complex. I’m curious if I’m understanding correctly-the one dimensional model that bitcoin has some characteristics withing the creation of the blocks (which I don’t understand) that keep value at less than zero and continually pushing further and further less than zero. That keeps it in the “cold” zone. I don’t understand the technical aspects of the importance of this, but I think I get the broad picture.
With the two dimensional characteristics of Oroborus, the issue is that number tends to gravitate to zero which is too close to comfort to a positive number-is that correct?

I’m kind of relating this to electronics, and that “zero” reminds me of “ground”. It sounds like you guys are doing a thing where you “float” the ground so that the zero value is actually still in the cold area, and being just a bit in the positive is not a big deal. Is that basically what you guys are saying? Pardon my exceedingly laymans way of trying to understand this…

Hello @mbirame :slight_smile:

I’d definitely defer to @io_jeremy here :smiley:

I’m really pleased people like the whiteboards and thanks for taking the time to write!

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Thanks for the vote of confidence, but it is too technical for me. :slight_smile:

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@io_jeremy, is there anyone from the team here that does understand?

We have been looking for people who can write on the technology for a long time. Anyone reading this with strong tech knowledge and writing skills please apply, part time is ok. But many people at IOHK are working professionals and are not part of the wider community efforts.

This has given me an idea though, perhaps we can organize an AMA soon.

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With all due respect to the brilliant academics involved with this project, at some point in the future I think it will be important for Cardano to consider a marketing team that can really simplify the benefits of this system for the average person. Mass adoption means appealing the widest base, and not just the tech people and academics who understand these lectures. There’s also a lot to be said for making these whiteboard presentations a little more entertaining, and focusing not so much on the details of how it works, but the implications of this technology, and how will it change the world. (But I’m sure this has all been considered, and will come in due time. For now I’m happy to see Cardano keep the hype to a minimum and focus on the software)

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It was good, but, the key part on “Reach” was confusing. After watching that part 5 times, I concluded that he has an actual technical definition of Reach that he didn’t specify, or, it’s an unsolved mystery box.