Blockchain Consensus Protocols

Bitcoin Meetup, May 6, 2015
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
www.BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain
Consensus Protocols

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Consensus 1
Melanie Swan, Blockchain Scholar
 Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
 Singularity University Instructor, EDGE Contributor
IEET Affiliate Scholar
 Swan, M. Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. Sebastopol CA: O'Reilly Media, 2015.
 Swan, M. We Should Consider The Future World As One Of Multi-Species Intelligence. Response to The Edge Question 2015: What do you
think about machines that think? John Brockman, Ed., 2015.
 Swan, M. Cognitive Applications of the Brain as a DAC. Cognitive Science 2015: The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Mind,
Technology, and Society, Pasadena CA, July 2015. submitted.
 Swan, M. Philosophy of Big Data: Expanding the Human-Data Relation with Big Data Science Services. IEEE BigDataService 2015,
Redwood City CA, Mar 31-Apr 2, 2015.
 Swan, M. Blockchain Thinking: The Brain as a DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporation). Texas Bitcoin Conference, Austin TX, March
27-29, 2015.
 Swan, M. Machine ethics interfaces: An ethics of perception of nanorobot-aided cognition. Journal of Responsible Innovation. submitted.
Traditional Markets,
Science, Arts Background
New Vision
Source: http://melanieswan.com/publications.htm

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Consensus 2
Blockchain (non-technical overview of blockchain possibilities)
 What people are saying…
 #mindblowing – SD
 Intriguing - JH
 Great to read your book! Willing to transform
your ideas to real life – AW
 I find it amazing … a good mix of explanation
about state-of-the-art products as well as
visionary ideas. I was waiting for awhile for this
kind of book – JM
 A compelling and unique overview of the
possibilities – DC
 Thank you for helping bring about a new era in
finance – JW
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Consensus
Diverse Protocols
3
https://twitter.com/matteastwood/status/594603199685926913/photo/1

May 6, 2015
Future: Diverse Consensus Protocols, why?
4
 Key cryptography problems in distributed
networks remain unsolved or solutions
untested at a robust scale
 BFT (Byzantine fault tolerance): network
coordination despite faulty nodes
 Sybil attack: distributed network flooded with
forged identities
 One size consensus does not fit all apps
 POW mining not the best consensus protocol
for enterprise blockchain apps that need
 Faster, cheaper settlement
 Legal identity verification
 Greater scalability, performance

May 6, 2015
Bitcoin/FinTech Investment Growth
5
https://angel.co/bitcoin, http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2015/02/the-fintech-scene-is-so-hot-its-boiling.html
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/04/16/bitcoin-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-idea/
Silicon Valley Bank: Global
investment in FinTech is set to
double from $10 billion in 2014
to $19.7 billion in 2015, and
reach $46.1 billion by 2020
2012
$2m $96m $350m $106m
2013 2014 1Q2015

May 6, 2015
Gartner Emerging Technology Hype Cycle
6
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/04/16/bitcoin-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-idea/
Cryptocurrencies added July 2014

May 6, 2015
Enterprise Blockchain Apps by Sector (selected)
7
Crucial Blockchain Properties
• Cryptoledger
• Decentralized network
• Trustless
counterparties
• Independent
consensus-confirmed
transactions
• Permanent record
• Public records
repository
• Notarization time-
stamping hashes
• Universal format
• Accessibility
Government
& Legal
• Transnational orgs
• Personalized
governance services
• Voting, propositions
• P2P bonds, land titles
• Tele-attorney services
• IP registration and
exchange
• Tax receipts
• Notary service and
document registry
Markets
• Currency
• Payments &
Remittance
• Banking & Finance
• Clearing &
Settlement
• Insurance
• FinTech
• Trading & Derivatives
• QA & Internal Audit
• Crowdfunding
IOT
• Agricultural & drone
sensor networks
• Smarthome networks
• Integrated smartcity,
connected car,
smarthome sensors
• Self-driving car
• Personalized robots,
robotic companions
• Personalized drones
• Digital assistants
• Communication
(messaging)
• Large-scale
coordination
• Entity ingress/egress
• Transaction security
• Large-scale multi-
data-stream
integration
• Privacy and security
Real-time
accessibility
Health
• Universal EMR
• Health databanks
• QS Data Commons
• Big health data
stream analytics
• Digital health wallet
• Smart property
• HealthToken
• Personal
development
contracts
• Large-scale
infrastructural
element for
coordination
• Checks-and-
balances system
for ‘good-player’
access
• Community
supercomputing
• Crowd analysis
• P2P resourcenets
• Film, dataviz
• AI: blockchain
advocates, friendly
AI, blockchain
learners, digital
mindfile services
Science,
Art, AI

May 6, 2015
Byzantine Empire (height AD 555)
8

May 6, 2015
Byzantine Generals Problem
 Several divisions of the Byzantine army are camped
outside an enemy city, each division commanded by its
own general. The generals can communicate with one
another only by messenger. They must decide upon a
common plan of action. However, some of the generals
may be traitors, trying to prevent the loyal generals from
reaching agreement. The generals must have an algorithm
to guarantee that
 A. All loyal generals decide upon the same plan of action
 The loyal generals will all do what the algorithm says they
should, but the traitors may do anything they wish. The
algorithm must guarantee condition A regardless of what
the traitors do. The loyal generals need to reach agreement
and agree on a reasonable plan that also insures that
 B. A small number of traitors cannot cause the loyal
generals to adopt a bad plan
9
Lamport, Shostack and Pease, "the Byzantine Generals Problem", ACM Transactions on Programming Languages
and Systems,Vol.4, No. 3, July 1982, Pages 382-401. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=357176

May 6, 2015
Byzantine Generals Problem, Byzantine Fault
Tolerance (BFT), Byzantine Agreement (BA)
 Distributed network security problem
 Problem: achieving consensus in a distributed network
with potentially faulty nodes; how to coordinate among
distributed nodes to come up with a consensus
(common view of the world) that is resistant to attackers
trying to undermine that consensus
 Important consensus system properties in a distributed
system or distributed algorithm
 Safety: require that “something bad will never happen”
 Liveness: require that “something good will eventually happen,”
the system makes progress (example: eventual consistency)
10

May 6, 2015
Approaches to Consensus/BFT
11
 Byzantine Agreement Protocol (synchronous)
 Microsoft/Lamport: Paxos (state machine replication)
 Google: Chubby (serve strongly consistent files)
 POW (Bitcoin) ‘Nakamoto Consensus’ – expensive,
high latency
 POS (Tendermint) – requires resource ownership, risk
of ‘nothing-at-stake’ attacks per revoked escrow
 Pebble: ARBC (Asynchronous Randomized Byzantine
Consensus)
 UT: BAR (Byzantine, altruistic, rational) protocol
 Stellar: SCP Quorum Slicing
 Other: Prediction Markets (Augur), Meta (Factom)
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lorenzo/papers/sosp05.pdf

May 6, 2015
POW ‘Nakamoto Consensus’ Shortcomings
 Sybil attack-resistant compromise for
decentralized consensus but not the final
solution for distributed network fault-tolerant
security for scalability and performance, key
issues:
1. Expensive, excessive energy consumption
2. Poor scalability for widespread blockchain use
especially for IOT
3. Slow: high latency (1-10 minutes to confirm
transactions); only eventually consistent
12
https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949
http://crypto.stanford.edu/seclab/sem-14-15/williams.html

May 6, 2015
Pebble: Asynchronous Randomized
Byzantine Consensus (Concept)
13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEgjqIMtVQ
 Asynchronous Byzantine consensus for
decentralized networks using cryptographic
randomness, combine
 Nakamoto chains (randomness source, Merkle
roots log) with …
 conventional consensus techniques (produce
consensus by agreeing upon data transitions
through a new generation of highly-tuned and
optimized conventional consensus protocols) to …
 produce fast and scalable decentralized networks

May 6, 2015
Byzantine Consensus (Method features)
14
FLP: Fischer, Lynch and Patterson Friedman et al. 2003. Simple and efficient oracle-based consensus protocols for asynchronous
Byzantine systems. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=1353024 Maji et all. Exploring the limits of common
coins using frontier analysis of protocols. 2011. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1987298
 Asynchronous (resist attack)
 Fully asynchronous (no timing assumptions) and
leader-free (no one node orchestrates)
 Randomized (improve efficiency)
 Address FLP impossibility result (in asynchronous
networks, if only one node fails, cannot be sure
remaining nodes will reach consensus)
 Randomized protocols get around this by
terminating with a probability approaching 1
 Need a common source of randomness, so use
blockchains (constant source of randomness;
cannot predict who finds the next hash) to organize
the network
 Use deterministic homomorphic threshold
signatures to create cryptographic randomness
without having a trusted dealer

May 6, 2015
Byzantine Consensus (Example)
15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEgjqIMtVQ
 Fast-throughput (achieve scalability)
 Run massive numbers of binary leader-free
asynchronous randomized consensus protocols
in parallel to quickly agree a combined data set
from the inputs of large numbers of processes
 Proof of concept
 Focus on messaging efficiency, decentralized
network scalability and confirmation speed
 Enable 500 distributed processes to
simultaneously present their data sets to the
group and quickly reach strongly consistent
agreement on an accepted superset
 Pass only 0.5-1MB of protocol messages
 A network reaching consensus every 5
seconds would have spare bandwidth to
process many thousands of transactions per
second

May 6, 2015
UT BAR (Byzantine, altruistic, rational)
16
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lorenzo/papers/sosp05.pdf
 Concept: granular model of good agent behavior
 Altruistic and rational nodes participating in a
cooperative system will try to maximize their utility, and
broadcast information in predicable, reliable phases
 No node is guaranteed to follow the suggested protocol
 The actions of most nodes are guided by self interest
 Some nodes may be categorically broken
 Objective: develop Byzantine, altruistic, rational fault-
tolerant system for cooperative services

May 6, 2015
Stellar: Quorum Slicing (Concept)
17
 Objective: distributed consensus
 Nodes update their states/ledgers
 Avoid Byzantine failure (when individual nodes act
arbitrarily, maliciously or not)
 Distinguish between
 Quorum: the set of nodes required to reach
agreement across the whole system
 Quorum Slice: the subset of a quorum that can
convince one particular node of agreement
 Result: federated network of quorum slices,
continually testing the network
 Do not need to trust the whole system/network, just
your neighbors, you do not know who to trust
initially, join the network, and try before you trust, the
system grows organically, each party makes a slice
of others from the whole to trust

May 6, 2015
Federated Quorum Slice Network
18
 Resilient network
 Overall network health is preserved even if there are a few
bad nodes, and some good nodes slicing the bad nodes
 Unanimous consent from the complete set of system nodes is
not required to reach agreement, or tolerate faulty nodes

May 6, 2015
Stellar graphic novel explains Quorum Slicing
19
https://www.stellar.org/stories/adventures-in-galactic-consensus-chapter-1/

May 6, 2015
Stellar: Context of Byzantine Agreement
20
 Traditional Byzantine agreement protocol (BAP)
 Membership is set by a central authority or closed
negotiation (Sybil attack-resistant)
 Update BAP for decentralized group admission
 Ripple: publish a ‘starter’ membership list that participants
can edit for themselves
 Divergent lists invalidate network safety; users fail to update
 Tendermint: base membership on proof of stake
 Ties trust to resource ownership; revoked escrow attacks
 Stellar: open membership, participants affirm trust
 Quorum is still vulnerable to Sybil attack, malicious parties can join
many times and outnumber honest nodes. So majority-based quorums
do not work, but a federated network of quorum slices can
 Each node selects and tests quorum slices based on safety and
liveness; voting to accept statements (of network state)

May 6, 2015
Stellar: Consensus Protocol Comparison
21
SCP: Stellar Consensus Protocol

May 6, 2015
Prediction Market Voting as Consensus
22
http://tendermint.com/posts/security-of-cryptocurrency-protocols/
http://tendermint.com/docs/tendermint.pdf
 Concept: achieve agreement through human
voting via prediction markets - not just a
betting tool, a wisdom-of-crowds opinion-
logging tool, collect millions of opinions in RT
 Bitcoin/Blockchain Prediction Markets
 Fairlay
 Augur (all contracts live on Ethereum testnet)
 Trustless Oracle/Event Derivatives
 TruthCoin
 Governance Prediction Markets
 Futarchy: 1) vote on outcome 2) run prediction
market to vote on plans for achieving the outcome

May 6, 2015
Derrida: Ontology of Joycean Consensus
23
Derrida. Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes In Joyce. Pp. 267, 296.
 Affirmation is not solo, “saying yes” is dependent
upon another to hear it and acknowledge receipt
 The affirmation relation is totalization-resisting, the
affirming and acknowledging parties, and the yes
itself, remain distinct
 “The two responses refer to each other without having any
relationship between them. The two sign yet prevent the
signature from gathering itself together [totalizing].”
 The yes “addresses itself to some other which it does not constitute”
 The yes avoids its own totalization, “The yes, by responding and
countersigning, does not let itself be counted or discounted
[totalized].”
 Well-formed consensus: preserve the integrity of
entities in network of ad-hoc reciprocal relations

May 6, 2015
2 Groups of Crypto Projects and Consensus:
Permissioned and Permissionless Ledgers
24
Swanson, T. (2015). Consensus as a service: a brief report on the emergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems
http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Permissioned-distributed-ledgers.pdf
Enduser
• Censorship-resistant
• ‘Brave new world’ apps
• Anonymous validators (network
vulnerable to anonymous attack)
Enterprise
• Identity-confirmed
• ‘Reinvent the existing world’
efficiency improvement apps
• Official legal registry
Stellar

May 6, 2015
Evolving Dapp Ecosystem
25
Dapp: Decentralized Application
Project Name and URL Activity Centralized
Equivalent
OpenBazaar https://openbazaar.org Buy/sell items locally Craigslist
Twister http://twister.net.co, Gems http://getgems.org
Reveal http://rvl.rvl.is/, BitCloud http://bitcloudproject.org/
RetroShare http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
Project Groundhog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFeJYv3PSaI
Social networking, peer-to-peer
microblogging, messaging; private
token-based social messaging
Facebook, Twitter
Bitmessage https://bitmessage.org Secure messaging (individual or
broadcast)
SMS services
LaZooz http://lazooz.org On-demand ride service Uber, Lyft
Storj http://storj.io/
Maidsafe http://maidsafe.net/
IPFS http://ipfs.io/
File storage, file serving Dropbox, Google
Drive
Onename https://onename.com/
BitID https://github.com/bitid/bitid
Bithandle http://www.hackathon.io/bithandle
Digital identity verification VeriFone, Verisign,
Facebook
Provenance https://www.provenance.org/ Supply chain management Oracle, SAP
Mist (Ethereum)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgNjs_WaFSc
ProTip Add-on https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protip-peer-
to-peer-tipping-for-the-web
Dapp browser Chrome, Firefox,
Internet Explorer

May 6, 2015
Enterprise Blockchain Apps by Sector (selected)
26
Crucial Blockchain Properties
• Cryptoledger
• Decentralized network
• Trustless
counterparties
• Independent
consensus-confirmed
transactions
• Permanent record
• Public records
repository
• Notarization time-
stamping hashes
• Accessibility
Government
& Legal
• Transnational orgs
• Personalized
governance services
• Voting, propositions
• P2P bonds, land titles
• Tele-attorney services
• IP registration and
exchange
• Tax receipts
• Notary service and
document registry
Markets
• Currency
• Payments &
Remittance
• Banking & Finance
• Clearing &
Settlement
• Insurance
• FinTech
• Trading & Derivatives
• QA & Internal Audit
• Crowdfunding
IOT
• Agricultural & drone
sensor networks
• Smarthome networks
• Integrated smartcity,
connected car,
smarthome sensors
• Self-driving car
• Personalized robots,
robotic companions
• Personalized drones
• Digital assistants
• Communication
(messaging)
• Large-scale
coordination
• Entity ingress/egress
• Transaction security
• Large-scale multi-
data-stream
integration
• Privacy and security
Real-time
accessibility
Health
• Universal EMR
• Health databanks
• QS Data Commons
• Big health data
stream analytics
• Digital health wallet
• Smart property
• HealthToken
• Personal
development
contracts
• Large-scale
infrastructural
element for
coordination
• Checks-and-
balances system
for ‘good-player’
access
• Community
supercomputing
• Crowd analysis
• P2P resourcenets
• Film, dataviz
• AI: blockchain
advocates, friendly
AI, blockchain
learners, digital
mindfile services
Science,
Art, AI

May 6, 2015
Financial and Public Records Applications
 Financial instruments
1. Currency
2. Private equities
3. Public equities
4. Bonds
5. Derivatives Commodities
6. Spending records
7. Trading records
8. Mortgage/loan records
9. Servicing records
10. Crowdfunding
11. Microfinance
27
http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1402/how-to-get-started-your-first-dapp-under-one-hour
 Public Records
1. Land titles
2. Vehicle registries
3. Business incorporations
4. Criminal records
5. Passports
6. Birth certificates
7. Death certificates
8. Voter Registration
9. Voting Records
10. Health/safety inspections
11. Building permits
12. Court records

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Insurance
 Argument
 Most of world is underserved
 Current insurance is inaccurately expensive and
payout is unpredictable (when/whether/to what extent
claim is accepted)
 Smart contract-based insurance
 Financial security: predictable payout terms and timing
 Peer-to-peer insurance
 Peer-evaluated and peer-adjudicated health claims
 Dynamis www.dynamisapp.com, BitSilk https://twitter.com/bitsilk
 Collaborative risk modeling
 Drought experts invest in peer-based crop insurance
pools (unites wisdom-of-crowds expertise)
28

May 6, 2015
What is Smart Property?
 Register assets to blockchain via unique key
 Real-time GPS ‘LoJack’ tracking for any asset
 Blockchain becomes an inventory, tracking,
and exchange mechanism for all hard assets
 Smart Property Applications
 Drug and equipment inventory (example: Blocktrace
ledger tracks diamonds); equipment servicing records
 On-demand real-time equipment inventories
 Supply chain provenance (provenance.org)
 Test results logged as smart property
 Digital authentication and real-time keyless entry
 OpenBazaar health exchange markets (equipment)
29
https://openbazaar.org/, http://www.edgelogic.net/blocktrace, Provenance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqIUBn80pg4
A decentralized CraigsList

May 6, 2015
What is are Smart Contracts?
30
 Agreements between parties posted to the
blockchain for automated execution
 Examples
 Bet on high temperature tomorrow
 Inheritance pay-out at age 21 or death of benefactor
 Mortgage with automatic interest-rate resets
 Blockchain-based Greek tax receipts in Ricardian
Contracts (Yanis Varoufakis)
 Code: Ethereum and Eris
 https://github.com/ethereum/
 https://erisindustries.com/
https://eng.erisindustries.com/smart%20contracts/2014/12/17/dennys-smart-contracting/ ,
http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1402/how-to-get-started-your-first-dapp-under-one-hour,
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001555.html

May 6, 2015
Blockchain IOT
31
http://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-of-things-market-to-hit-7-1-trillion-by-2020-idc/,
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/09/check-out-ibms-proposal-for-an-internet-of-things-architecture-using-bitcoins-block-chain-tech/
 M2M/IOT Bitcoin payment network to
enable the machine economy & mThings
 The economic layer the web never had
 IOT 2020: 26 bn devices in a $7 tn market
 IOT agricultural and environmental
sensors posting to blockchains
 Quantifying processes; insurance data
 Smartcity orchestration
 Example project: IBM Adept
 Blockchain + Messaging + BitTorrent
 Communication + coordination mechanism
 Scale from thousands to millions of sensors
Smartcity Infrastructure
and Connected Car
Orchestration
IOT Sensor and Drone
Agricultural Monitoring

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Smarthome IOT
32
 Smarthome IOT networks
 Tool for managing device proliferation
 Provide security and privacy of sensitive
smarthome data: physical and mental health,
product consumption
 Devices: personal robotics, digital health
assistants, artificial companions, health
optimizers, quantified self-tracking
wearables, smartwatch, Fitbit, health tracker
 With permissioning, smarthome, connected
car, smartcity infrastructure to provide daily
health check for the whole populace,
including quality-of-life mental state
Personal Robotics
Coordination
Smarthome IOT: Hue Go
Wireless Smartlighting and
Amazon Dash Button

May 6, 2015
Blockchains: Global and Liberty-enhancing
33
 Global governance for transnational organizations
 WikiLeaks, ICANN, Wikipedia
 Benefits of blockchain administration
 Uplift to cloud from local jurisdictional regulations
 Universal administration mechanism for global organizations
 Structure promotes transparency, accountability, freedom
 Namecoin: decentralized DNS
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-move-to-choke-wikileaks/
Snowden Affair

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Government
 Opt-in Personalized Government
 Composting vs education
 Smart property land-titling, reputation-
based ID system, voting, dispute
resolution, national income distribution,
public documents registry
 Neighbor.ly
 Self-directed community bonds
 Precedentcoin
 Crowdsourced legal services, justice
entrepreneurs, blockchain arbitration
 Sidekik
 On-demand tele-attorney, private police
34
http://www.bitnation.co/, https://bitcoinmagazine.com/17066/first-blockchain-wedding-2/,
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/19813/sidekik-decentralized-video-streaming-storage/
World’s First Blockchain Marriage:
David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, October
5, 2014, Disney World FL, Coins in the
Kingdom Bitcoin Conference, Jeffrey
Tucker (Liberty.me) presiding

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Representation and Voting
 Futarchy, two-step program
1. Traditional vote on outcomes (ex: GDP)
2. Prediction markets to determine specific
proposals for achieving the outcome
 Delegative democracy (Liquid Democracy)
 Voting power temporarily vested in
delegates not long-term representatives
 Group proposition development
 Random Sample Elections
 Randomly selected individuals vote on a
single issue, blockchain orchestration
35
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/17066/first-blockchain-wedding-2/,
http://www.bitnation-blog.com/latest-update-dec-22nd-2014/

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Legal
 Notary Service, Attestation
 Register contracts, agreements, wills (Proof of Existence, Factom)
 Register, protect, and transact IP (Monegraph, Ascribe)
 How it works
 Hash + timestamp + blockchain record
36
http://www.proofofexistence.com/

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Science
 Distributed computing community
collaboration projects
 FoldingCoin (protein Folding@home)
 GridCoin (SETI@home)
 Community supercomputing
resource access
 Zennet
 ‘Green’ mining projects
 Primecoin
 FoldingCoin
 GridCoin
37
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-algorithms.html,
http://codinginmysleep.com/bitcoin-mining-in-plain-english/

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Health
 Universal EMR: finally ‘health XML’?
 Personal health records stored and administered via blockchain
 Users key-permission doctors and other parties into records
 Apple HealthKit, Bluehub Health, Google Health (concept)
 Health Databanks and Research Commons
 Aggregated personal medical records, quantified self data
commons, genome and connectome files
 Health Document Notary Services
 Proof-of-insurance, test results, prescriptions, status, diagnoses,
conditions, treatments, physician referrals
 Doctor Vendor RFP Services
 Doctors and health practices bid to supply medical services;
automated bidding via health exchanges (OpenBazaar)
38
http://futurememes.blogspot.fr/2014/09/blockchain-health-remunerative-health.html

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Big Health Data
 Proprietary genomic datasets and cloud-based tools
 Baylor College of Medicine (3,751 whole human genomes (of 7
bn) and 10,771 exomes (440 terabytes) as of 2013)
 Decentralized projects: big data access + query tools for
scalability, practicality, privacy, liberty, and RT availability
 DNA.bits (www.dna-bits.com) blockchain-based
 Large genetic dataset access with correlated clinical records
 Dexter (dexter.stanford.edu)
 Enduser-targeted, browser-based, domain-independent, structured-
data explorer; run big data queries from browser
 CrowdMed (www.crowdmed.com) crowdsourced disease diagnosis
 Enlitic (http://www.enlitic.com/) disease diagnosis via deep-learning
39
http://futurememes.blogspot.fr/2014/09/blockchain-health-remunerative-health.html

May 6, 2015
Digital Health Wallet
40
 Private key identity card + EMR +
health insurance info + payment data
 Use HealthToken to pay for services

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Literacy
 ‘Bitcoin MOOCs,’ ‘Kiva for literacy’
 Peer-to-peer learning contracts; technical,
agricultural, vocational literacy certification
 Global P2P giving: CommonCollection
 Chain-based personal development contracts
 QS-biometric utility function imputation and tracking
 Maslow chains, subjectivation and actualization
chains
 Development Economics 2.0
 Literacy contracts, remittances, blockchain-tracked
aid, microcredit, decentralized credit bureaus
 Open-source FICO scores
 Peer-vouching reputation communities
 Most of world: inadequate banking, insurance, credit
41

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Art
42
Rio, Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Barcelona, Seoul, Tokyo, New York
http://bitfilm.com/festival.html

May 6, 2015
Blockchain Art
43
http://cryptoart.com/
 Fine art paper wallets

May 6, 2015
Summary
44
 Current status of blockchain industry development…
 …investor interest shifting from speculative to strategic
 …innovation in Byzantine consensus protocols to help
decentralized networks scale up and become highly
performant, possibly faster than centralized networks
 …articulation of sector-specific enterprise blockchain
applications in markets, finance, banking, clearing,
trading, insurance, and supply chain tracking;
government and legal services; IOT; science and health

Bitcoin Meetup, May 6, 2015
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
www.BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain
Consensus Protocols
Thank You! Questions?

Blockchain Consensus Protocols

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