The TAU Programming Languages and Systems Seminar - The Tangle, a DAG-based approach to probabilistic consensus

ABSTRACT:

The Tangle is a novel approach to achieving consensus, inspired by the Bitcoin blockchain. It is in use in the IOTA distributed ledger.

Since Bitcoin's beginning in 2009, there have been many attempts to improve upon the original design. In particular, the transaction throughput is capped at around 7 transactions per second, which is a problem for global-scale adoption.

The Tangle's approach is to use a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) instead of a chain. Rather than approving a single previous block, we can approve several, which allows for temporary forks in the graph to be merged at a later time. We can thus be more flexible with the rate of incoming transactions, and increase the overall throughput.

In this talk, I will present the main ideas of the system, and how they are being used to achieve consensus in IOTA.