DLT technology discussions are entirely incomplete without consideration of Hedera Hashgraph [0], an aBFT, leaderless, fair and fast DLT using a gossip-about-gossip consensus mechanism. It's absolutely a more robust and scalable technology than Paxos or any other DLT for that matter. I'd love to know what the HN crowd thinks about Hedera as the trust layer of the internet but.... nobody around here seems to have any. It's like ignoring Linux while comparing Mac and Windows based computing.
I got interested into the hashgraph algorithm quite early and wrote a toy implementation in python (in fact discovering an error in the paper in the process). Unless something changed it's entirely useless for open-membership internet-scale consensus. As I remember, the processing time of a message at a node is linear in the number of nodes and same for the local storage at a node, meaning it's not very scalable. Moreover, the nodes must somehow a priori agree on the list of participants of the consensus process, again something which is not realistic for internet-wide consensus. The protocol is quite neat and not too hard to implement but it's similar in scope to paxos/raft: consensus inside an organization, where some things are a priori agreed upon.
Paxos isn't a DLT, it's a consensus algorithm — granted, DLTs tend to require a consensus algorithm, but they're not the same things.
As for Hedera Hashgraph being the trust layer of the internet, we tend to build the internet through the IETF and standards setting. Unfortunately HH is an endeavour from a private company so isn't especially likely to be taken on in that context.
I'd also wonder what you mean by the trust layer of the internet, what are the use cases that you'd like to see solved with such a trust layer?
Great point, I wasn't being precise. My point stands, however! I must also correct your understanding re: "private company."
The DLT in question - Hedera - is built on the unique consensus algorithm, the "hashgraph". The hashgraph algorithm combines a gossip-about-gossip protocol with virtual voting.
In fact, services development is now in the hands of the largest open source foundation in the world. These implementations are entirely open source [0], and very recently the codebase has been donated in whole to the Linux Foundation.
Furthermore, Hedera is a Pioneer member of the newly founded Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust organization [1] - along with Chainlink, Deloitte, Hitachi, many other major organizations, some of whom are also on the Hedera governing council [2]. This foundation will be a big player in the future of decentralized web, and Hedera is the only L1 that I know of which is both primed for this future and actually scalable.
I understand the IETF and standards approach; and am not aware of a current draft or intention for such a draft. The idea of Hedera being the 'trust layer' of the internet is more about use cases like decentralized recovery, process validation, carbon offsets, extremely granular supply chain auditing, and any other application you might imagine that would benefit from having extremely fast (10k+ TPS), 100% guaranteed aBFT consensus on-chain. I'd love to hear what you might think up or where this could be particularly useful.
Strong governance with 39 council members - including Google, IBM, Boeing, Tata, AP+, Hitachi and more... with decentralized network operation and stable fees (essential for enterprise application).
> Additional use cases include, but are not limited to, financial markets, matching engines (like those used in Uber or AirBnb), or supply chain negotiations (e.g., several competing factories bidding on parts from several competing parts suppliers).
So, admittedly the use cases maybe aren't evident or interesting to you and I right now at the TCP/IP layer, but I can certainly say there are a plethora of trust-based problems that could be solved with consensus only needing a few thousand ms. Think digital identity, healthcare, financial markets, IoT, supply chain, real-world asset tokenization... For any real-world, scaled application, a DLT must have very high throughput at high performance. It's the absolute highest performance and security possible in a leaderless consensus-based DLT as far as I know.
Literally carbon neutral or negative because of buybacks but even without Hedera buying carbon credits, it's the single most "green" i.e. power-efficient DLT on the market. Does HN still care about Bitcoin using too much power? They would like Hedera, to that extent. Predictable, very low fixed fees. Long list of the biggest tech players leading the open development process. What's not to love?
I urge you to help me invalidate these claims as it's pretty important I understand the tech here... But I'm very bullish on the token price as the technology is proven, robust, and overall extremely undervalued by retail - in my opinion. NFA.
> The Hashgraph consensus algorithm is an algorithm for asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance intended for distributed shared ledgers. Its main distinguishing characteristic is it achieves consensus without exchanging any extra messages; each participant’s votes can be determined from public information, so votes need not be transmitted.
For more rigorous explanation, see [3] and the associated Coq proof of the algorithm [4].
[0]: https://www.swirlds.com/downloads/SWIRLDS-TR-2016-01.pdf