okay so networking one of the most
common questions when asked about
athyrium is how is it different how's it
different from bitcoin specifically and
i think networking is probably one of
the areas where athyrium is
significantly different so yeah
networking what is the network everyone
here is a network they say that the way
that our brains work is the neural
network so it only makes sense that we
created the internet which is also a
network to connect all of us together
and we've become very dependent on this
our economy functions on networks our
cell phones function on networks are
corporations function on networks and as
engineers we found ways to to define
networking and to define its function
and to replicate that and to build on
top of that this is a image of various
systems used to power the internet I'm
sure everyone here has heard of ethernet
networking equipment switching equipment
IT operations
a lot of systems today now run on
Ethernet and that used to not always be
the case one interesting story about
Ethernet though is that get a little bit
of feedback is that it used to be a hub
broadcast based system and what this
means is that when one device sends out
a packet it goes to all of the devices
there was no filtering there was no
there were no limitations so if you had
a system with 10 devices on it you'd be
fine if you went to a hundred or a
thousand devices it just wouldn't work
because the network would try and
deliver every message to everyone for
every packet so to to resolve that issue
they came up with switched networks and
today we have switch Ethernet we also
have another virtual layer of Ethernet
called VPN a sorry V win and that is
used to further allow switch networks to
filter and route traffic in a way that
is can be optimized for the network that
is built for so why is that interesting
I think that's interesting because I
think today with Bitcoin and athyrium we
are at that stage so with with with with
Bitcoin and athyrium and any kind of
distributed period most distributed
peer-to-peer applications their
broadcast based so they're they're
either broadcast based or they're very
exclusive and that they are broadcast
base but you have like a swarm of peers
and they're all they're all concerned
with a single torrent hash or something
as we move forward like as we define the
way that the networking of Bitcoin
athyrium works we're going to begin
addressing scalability and I think that
that's going to look similar to switched
switch networks IP of course runs on top
of Ethernet so this is a kind of layered
we have physical and then adjustability
and then application and it's kind of a
generalized stack layers and etherium is
built on a network stack that is very
similar to this so I tell you a little
bit about myself real quick I've always
been into networking security picked up
programming just after high school
working at a telecommunications company
and became very interested in the way
that networks work so today if you were
to open your browser if you were to use
her cell phone if you were to run any
kind of application it's probably going
to connect with TLS and this was a case
in 2000 with ssl when i first started
getting into networking and and software
applications so TLS was previously was
SSL and its name came from Microsoft
agreeing to use the Netscape technology
which is great because that's a
demonstration of
two really amazing technology companies
coming together to standardize on
encryption so last week I talked to one
of the one of the individuals that
worked on TLS and started to explain how
I felt about the protocol and he said
yep completely agree so when SSL and TLS
was created we did not have some of the
strong assertions about cryptography
that we have today and we did we didn't
have the same computational power then
that we had today as well so there's
general agreement that what we have now
can be improved getting into atheneum
development started chatting with Gavin
early last year and started working on
the c++ client and just prior to that
metallic add released the white paper
and talking to Gavin it seemed like we
all agreed that etherium could be a
great opportunity to improve networking
to improve the general state of things
with regard to encryption so if we're
going to build out a new network for
applications for smart contracts let's
see if we can also improve the network
there's an interesting talk by Daniel
Jay Bernstein where he presents himself
as an employee of Verizon and it's great
if you can find that it's it's it's a
it's good to watch especially if you are
in if you're in any kind of if if you
work on a system that is built to
exchange information and you are the man
in the
so if you're a telecommunications
provider if you're a bank if you're
operate point-of-sale systems anywhere
where you have a massive amount of data
going through your system it's good to
actually step back and realize this and
realize that if there's a breach you
you're so it's you get a lot of value
out of being the man in the middle but
if there's a breach now maybe you're
liable but not only that maybe as we
start building decentralized
applications you may be able to offload
that to the network and both be able to
provide value and not have the liability
so to provide privacy in in in in
addition to value so today networking
principally is based on at a low level
routing information so IP headers have a
source and a destination address this is
really similar to Bitcoin so bitcoin
bitcoin has a signer and then it has the
destination address and a change address
and this is very similar to forwarding a
packet across the internet except you
might split back at half and let's not a
call it a packet let's call it a payload
and so with with with Bitcoin you've
basically got all these payloads being
routed through all of these accounts and
this is very similar to email except
it's secure and there's some value
attached to that trip to that
transaction athyrium by the way we
actually do this a little differently
the the way that the signature system
works you can look at it similar to
Bitcoin was actually quite
different you sign the transaction and
the person that wants to verify it they
they recover your public key out of the
transaction and then verify that that
that that's accurate and then take the
information that's been signed and then
process that so what's significant there
is that its application oriented instead
of networking so applications have a
different challenge and that is
discovery if you have a network and your
routing information everywhere this is
very useful but especially if you can
decentralize all of it right so
decentralize all the things and that's
useful well actually it turns out it's
not if UD centralize all the things and
you don't know where all the things are
your applications can't use the network
so what you have to do when you're
building your application is in your
application you have to build something
that organizes all of the things that
you've you've decentralized so this is
known as routing there dhts there's a
lot of technology they can do this and
protocols and what they basically do is
they let you determine exactly where the
information is that you need and then
get you that information and this is
again becoming very different than
networking of the past with vitarium
with applications you will connect to
your peers and be able to advertise what
you need or what you're interested in
and then the network will bring it to
you and this is very useful and we have
to be careful though we have to build
this slowly
and we have to do it right because while
it can be really useful and everyone
agrees that that we need to improve here
and this general stack of networking and
applications everything's talking to
each other we have to be careful that we
don't mess it up so in order to
facilitate application that works we
have a network protocol with athyrium
for athyrium notes which is encrypted
throughout the network and has a
separate node discovery system so quick
clarification node can be anything right
now we have a system for peers who are
the notes to form a network to be able
to broadcast transactions and what that
gets us today is a stable network for
transaction delivery block delivery
downloads etc we've recently added
framing and we'll be adding flow control
soon and what this means is that you can
create a sub protocol that runs on the
etherium network so let's get that so
we're doing that ourselves and the sub
protocols that we're going to run our
there's 'if for the blockchain whisper
which is and this is which is swarm you
can add your protocol here and each one
of these protocols is its own set of
nodes and what this means at the end of
the day is that today everything is a
thin client
so today everything is HTML and if we
wanted to go into gmail and say okay i
want to send an email i want to some
Bitcoin to one of my contacts or i want
to sign an a you know theriyum contract
like executed athyrium contract with one
of my contacts I can't really do that
like there's not an interface in the
browser to say okay execute this
function with this application network
and a lot of times if you want to
actually do that you have to put have a
have a plug-in so what we're going to be
building with athyrium and exposing for
your applications is the ability for
your applications do you have networks
and have networks of networks which
Bitcoin the etherium blockchain these
are these are networks to interface with
each other to pass messages to each
other and to communicate in a way that
this not previously available so and
that's it
you