Ethereum Casper update whitepapers online

Casper, one of the Ethereum protocol updates that will improve the processing in the blockchain and implement various optimizing solutions, is now described in three white papers issued by the development team.

The papers are still being edited, but they are already available online. The first one, titled "Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget" (a reference to the old movie about Casper, the friendly ghost), provides a description of the consensus system. The proof-of-work and the proof-of-stake will not be swiftly replaced one by another, but merged instead, it notes: "The proposal mechanism will initially be the existing Ethereum proof-of-work chain, making the first version of Casper a hybrid PoW/PoS algorithm that relies on proof of work for liveness but not safety, but in future versions the proposal mechanism can be substituted with something else."

The second whitepaper is dedicated to the issue of getting the whole system to work as intended since the launch day. It is called "Incentives in Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget". Among other information, there is a description of an interesting penalty mechanism for the validators that will try to compromise the system – their deposits will become empty.

And the third whitepaper is on the 51-percent attacks issue: the hackers, turns out, can hijack the mining pool computing power and bend the system to their will after that. However, the penalty mechanism mentioned in the second paper will work here as a solution as well.