Blockchains, Sidechains and Byzantine Generals
Nearly everyone has heard of Bitcoin, Dogecoin and the menagerie of serious and silly cryptocurrencies that allow value transfer on the Internet. How do they work though and how do they apply to the larger world of distributed systems?
This will be a theoretical but fun and educational look at how the idea of public, distributed transactions can be managed using blockchains and sidechains. While they do form the basis of cryptocurrencies, they also are beginning to show up in the designs of other forms of distributed information and value exchanges. Even if you aren't interested in cryptocurrencies, you should pay attention to their underlying structures.
About Brian Sletten
Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.
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