How does Casper compare to Ouroboros?

Developers
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Prof. Aggelos Kiayias
Just posted his brief comparison of Ouroboros and Casper proof-of-stake protocols.

Excellent work.

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Very well replied!

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For brevity he could have cut the post to a single line:

“Regarding Casper, we are not aware of any currently published source that sufficiently describes the protocol’s mode of operation nor any provable guarantees about it.”

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Just for completeness, I’m posting the rebuttal from Vitalik https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/95xgno/how_does_casper_compare_to_ouroboros_iohk_blog/e3wdzk9/

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Ethereum has to submit their work for peer review.

Discussing this in reddit is not very academic

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Mr. Vitalik rebuttal:
“WTF? First of all, there is the Casper FFG paper. Second, there is the full FFG mini-spec. Both contain definitions of key guarantees (safety, plausible liveness, fairness…), along with proofs that they’re satisfied. In addition, there are computer-verified proofs of the properties of Casper FFG.”

Once again Prof. Aggelos Kiayias stance:
“Regarding Casper, we are not aware of any currently published source that sufficiently describes the protocol’s mode of operation nor any provable guarantees about it.”

The key here is sufficiently describes and nor any provable guarantees about it, Mr. Vitalik cites these three publications as his rebuttal:

I was aware of two of the three, the forum post one I was not. Perhaps the same can be said of Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, or maybe he read them all, it really does not matter as the cited rebuttal pdfs and post do not negate Prof. Kiayias position.

What is going on here? This is not like Vitalik, I’m at a loss, I cannot say with reasonable certainty that I understand his position, as he plainly does not understand the Professors, but now Vitalik seems to have no hesitation in setting himself up as a judge, not only does he disagree with what he does not understand but he then argues into a position he cannot plainly express.

If you should happen to read this forum-post, Mr. Vitalik, please get back what you have lost, understand first then you can put on your judges’ robe if you must.

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@philpa had this to say:

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thank you for posting this. :slight_smile:

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Response by Charles Hoskinson on Reddit.

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Does not matter whether V is a genius or not. His actions, and Charles’ either, is based on self-justification (Social Pschicology).
“People are motivated to justify their own actions, beliefs, and feelings.
When they do something, they will try, if at all possible, to convince
themselves (and others) that it was a logical, reasonable thing to do.”
Aronson, Elliot (2008). The Social Animal

To decide who is right, the debaters should follow some certain (argumentation theory based) rules e.g. Pragme-dialectics or similar. V did a lot of logical fallacies in this debate, (Charles’ did either, but much less). Therefore, I tend to think that V is not as genius as he and others think he is.
Luckily, I cannot say the same for C, despite the fact that he very easily can be distracted emotionally, but I always say: “People who do stupid things are not necessarily stupid.” Slightly modified “first law” of Aronson

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Great video thanks for posting mate!

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Further discussion between Vitalik Buterin and Aggelos Kiayias on Reddit.

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