Strange Loop

2009 - 2023

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St. Louis, MO

Tezos, decentralized cryptographic governance through self-amendments

We present Tezos, a generic and self-amending crypto-ledger which can instantiate any blockchain based ledger. The operations of a regular blockchain are implemented as a purely functional module abstracted into a shell responsible for network operations. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. can all be represented within Tezos by implementing the proper interface to the network layer. Most importantly, Tezos supports meta upgrades: the protocols can evolve by amending their own code. To achieve this, Tezos begins with a seed protocol defining a procedure for stakeholders to approve amendments to the protocol, including amendments to the voting procedure itself. This is not unlike philosopher Peter Suber's Nomic, a game built around a fully introspective set of rules. In addition, Tezos's seed protocol is based on a pure proof-of-stake system and supports Turing complete smart contracts. Tezos is implemented in OCaml, a powerful functional programming language offering speed, an unambiguous syntax and semantic, and an ecosystem making Tezos a good candidate for formal proofs of correctness.

Arthur Breitman

Arthur Breitman

DLS

I recently started working in the self-driving car division at X (formerly Google X). Prior to that, I worked as a statistician for ten years in the financial industry at small hedge funds and large banks alike. I originally hail from France, but spent ten years in New York prior to moving to California.