CERN Colloquium

Distributing Trust with Blockchains

by Christian Cachin (IBM Research - Zurich)

Europe/Zurich
500/1-001 - Main Auditorium (CERN)

500/1-001 - Main Auditorium

CERN

400
Show room on map
Description

Cryptocurrencies on blockchains are worth billions today. Blockchain is promised to secure exchanges among unknown, mistrusting parties. Companies are struggling to explore new opportunities with the crypto-technology. What stands behind this hype?

A blockchain is simply a public ledger for recording transactions, maintained by many nodes without central authority through a distributed cryptographic protocol. All nodes validate the information to be appended to the blockchain, and a cryptographic consensus protocol ensures that the nodes agree on a unique order in which entries are appended. This talk will explore the cryptography and consensus mechanisms for blockchains. Public blockchains and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum operate in a completely decentralized way. Consortium blockchains, on the other hand, are run by an a-priori established group. The presentation will also cover Hyperledger Fabric, a modular and extensible blockchain platform that is developed open-source under the Hyperledger Project, with key contributions from IBM Research - Zurich.

Organised by

W. Lerche/TH-SP........ Tea and coffee will be served at 16h00

Webcast
There is a live webcast for this event