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Cardano has announced a ‘major advancement for proof of stake’.

The upgrade allegedly provides identical properties to proof of work protocols such as Bitcoin, but without the immense environmental costs and scalability limitations.

Of all the papers IOHK Research has written, this one is the most significant. It's a major advancement for Proof of Stake https://t.co/QNIPonatF6 now PoS has nearly identical properties to PoW. https://t.co/zAP7dSxR3y Welcome to the age of Ouroboros Genesis

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 26, 2018

Cardano, the blockchain project spearheaded by Charles Hoskinson is unique in its use of academic peer review as the mainstay of its development. All upgrades to the protocol are presented for review at cryptography conferences.

Proof of Stake is a newly emerging protocol for cryptocurrencies. Instead of mining the network is validated by users, who stake their funds to verify transactions on the network. It has been implemented on several blockchain ecosystems already, in varying forms. Most notably, development is well underway for a proof of stake system on the Ethereum network, named Casper.

The newly proposed upgrade for Cardano, named Ouroboros Genesis aims to solve one of the issues other systems have been facing, allowing users to leave and re-join the network in a secure manner. Other systems have been forced to take and analyze snapshots of their blockchains, in order to prevent malicious actors generating false transactions, but according to the report, Cardano’s new approach will sidestep the need for this point of failure.

The academic peer-review process is notoriously long, and a previous iteration of the Ouroboros protocol has only recently undergone expert examination.

Who's ready for EuroCrypt 2018! It's like the thunderdome of cryptography. Two papers enter, one leaves pic.twitter.com/DosXUY3Vo9

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 30, 2018

This version will most likely not be the final version -further upgrades to the protocol are expected over the coming years. When and how these upgrades will be implemented is not yet clear, with the project’s roadmap outlining that features of the proof of stake system will be released throughout 2018.

The system is currently live as a crypto token known as Ada, named after British-born Ada Lovelace, daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and pioneer computer developer.