January 26, 2026

Capitalizations Index – B ∞/21M

Researchers Propose New Version of Scalable Blockchain Alternative

Researchers propose new version of scalable blockchain alternative

Researchers Propose New Version of Scalable Blockchain Alternative

PhD candidate Yonatan Sompolinsky and Dr. Aviv Zohar, both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, released a paper this week on a new scalable BlockDAG — an alternative network structure to Blockchain — protocol called PHANTOM.

Sompolinsky and Zohar’s 2013 paper on the GHOST protocol introduced the BlockDAG structure — which essentially changes bitcoin’s Blockchain structure into a tree — as a way to improve security and speed up transaction times.

In a talk at “Blockchain in Berkeley” in November 2017, Sompolinsky explained the BlockDAG structure as serving everyone simultaneously. This is in contrast with the structure of Blockchain, in which new blocks are added one at a time once they have been verified.

Dag mining

The PHANTOM paper builds off of the researchers’ SPECTRE protocol, which confirms transactions with recursive voting of previous blocks. However, unlike SPECTRE, PHANTOM will use a “greedy algorithm” on a BlockDAG protocol to create a more linear block structure by “distinguish[ing] between blocks mined properly by honest nodes and those mined by non-cooperating nodes that deviated from the DAG mining protocol.”

The linear structure of PHANTOM means sacrificing the faster confirmation times that came with SPECTRE, although the paper brings up the possibility of combining the two protocols in order to “enjoy the best of both worlds.”

Although most cryptocurrencies run on a Blockchain protocol, there are several that run on BlockDAG. Byteball is a DAG-based currency in which transactions are linked together and contain hashes of previous transactions. IOTA is also DAG-based — the creation of a new transaction must validate at least two previous transactions.

Published at Sat, 03 Feb 2018 21:37:09 +0000

Blockchain[wpr5_ebay kw=”bitcoin” num=”1″ ebcat=”” cid=”5338043562″ lang=”en-US” country=”0″ sort=”bestmatch”]

Previous Article

Rarer Than Last Week’s Super Blue Blood Moon, CNBC Plugs Bitcoin

Next Article

National Bank of Abu Dhabi Partners with Ripple to Offer Real-Time Cross-Border Payments

You might be interested in …

Cory johnson: amazon could benefit from ripple’s solutions

Cory Johnson: Amazon Could Benefit From Ripple’s Solutions

Cory Johnson: Amazon Could Benefit From Ripple’s Solutions Cory Johnson, the Chief Market Strategist at Ripple, mentioned that Amazon and other retail companies could benefit from Ripple. He explained that such companies have several millions […]