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Proposal: Blockchain Labs Sponsorship

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
This proposal is cross-posted at www.dashcentral.org/p/asu-bc-lab-201707

This proposal seeks funding to sponsor Arizona State University's newly formed Blockchain Research Lab for research into blockchain throughput capacity and latency performance.

Background:

Until now, the majority of blockchain research has been focused on Bitcoin, with minimal focus on other blockchain applications [1]. According to research conducted by Yli-Huumo, et al. (2016), approximately 80% of of all academic research is focused on Bitcoin and less than 20% on other blockchain applications including smart contracts and licensing [1]. Additionally, blockchain scalability related challenges such as throughput capacity and latency have been ignored by researchers.

Dash is focused on becoming the first digital currency capable of mass-market adoption. We believe our incentivized infrastructure model offers a viable path to providing the capacity required to operate at massive scale. Validating and improving our approach through rigorous research offers enormous potential benefits to users over the long-term.

Solution:

This proposal outlines a sponsorship of the newly formed Blockchain Research Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU). Alt Thirty Six is a member and currently serves on the industrial advisory board to ASU’s CASCADE program in the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and was instrumental in helping to make this sponsorship possible. Alt Thirty Six recommended and received approval for the Dash sponsorship. The sponsorship would incorporate Dash as the exclusive digital currency for ongoing academic research.

After exploring topics of mutual interest, initial research would focus on throughput capacity and latency performance of blockchain technology, model and assess it for different network architectures (including Dash's multi-tiered architecture), applications, and use cases to propose a "scalability" deployment guide and best practices. Future research would focus on other areas outlined below.

Background on ASU:

ASU is the #1 ranked university in the United States for innovation by U.S. News and World Report, ahead of #2 ranked Stanford, and #3 ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Through fundamental research and strategic industry/university partnerships, ASU's Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering (CASCADE) is developing novel tools and architectures for reliable and timely data-driven decision making.

CASCADE's mission is to carry out research that translates technological insights obtained from fundamental research on (a) trusted and privacy preserving data processing and analysis, (b) real-time data processing and analysis, (c) parallel and distributed data processing and analysis, and (d) high dimensional and multi-modal data processing and analysis, into new key technology elements whose different instantiations are deployed for direct impact to various industries, including energy, healthcare, security, and finance. (https://cascade.asu.edu)

Potential Future Research:

1) How much hashrate is required to adequately secure a network?

2) Are there ways to incorporate ideas like collateralized mining to eliminate the “arms race” among miners and reduce waste in the current system?

3) Are there any technical or economic incentive solutions to prevent mining centralization?

Requested funding is as follows for the July 5th budget cycle:
  • 274.06 Dash for ASU Blockchain Research Laboratory sponsorship ($50,000 USD @ $182.44 per Dash)
  • 5.00 Dash proposal reimbursement
Total: 279.06 Dash

Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future research expenses.

Manually vote YES on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many f57a06fa0b1d4814b51bc8cffb83bf1c687cbb2928a39573bf03e4d444e401c4 funding yes
OR from the qt console:
gobject vote-many f57a06fa0b1d4814b51bc8cffb83bf1c687cbb2928a39573bf03e4d444e401c4 funding yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many f57a06fa0b1d4814b51bc8cffb83bf1c687cbb2928a39573bf03e4d444e401c4 funding no
OR from the qt console:
gobject vote-many f57a06fa0b1d4814b51bc8cffb83bf1c687cbb2928a39573bf03e4d444e401c4 funding no

References:

[1] Yli-Huumo J, Ko D, Choi S, Park S, Smolander K (2016) Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review. PLOS ONE 11(10): e0163477.
 
The sponsorship would incorporate Dash as the exclusive digital currency for ongoing academic research.

@Ryan Taylor could you elaborate more on what it means for Dash to be incorporated as the exclusive digital currency for ongoing research? (What is the marginal benefit of Dash sponsorship as opposed to allowing the organization to continue blockchain research on their own which they were probably already going to do?) If passed, is there some sort of contract involved? Also are the research findings made publicly available or are they specifically for the Dash core team?

Thanks--
 
@Ryan Taylor could you elaborate more on what it means for Dash to be incorporated as the exclusive digital currency for ongoing research? (What is the marginal benefit of Dash sponsorship as opposed to allowing the organization to continue blockchain research on their own which they were probably already going to do?) If passed, is there some sort of contract involved? Also are the research findings made publicly available or are they specifically for the Dash core team?

Thanks--

For the scope of the academic year we are sponsoring (2017-2018) ASU researchers will work with the Dash blockchain for its research. This will involve looking at other blockchains and approaches like Bitcoin's for comparison purposes, of course, but Dash will explicitly be included in the evalutation. The Dash team will has access to the research team and will provide input and expertise into the process through direct interaction with the research team. We have already assigned a team member with a PhD to be the point person within the Dash team. ASU is also agreeing to not work with a competitor on research topics of interest to them in a similar capacity. In the absence of a Dash sponsorship, it is true that ASU would research blockchain technology on their own, but the exact topics and direction the research follows would receive less direct input from Dash programmers and researchers.

Research findings will be made public, and Dash is not the only sponsor contributing funds toward the Lab.
 
I see this as an excellent beginning toward establishing relationships within the academic research community, that will go beyond ASU.
 
If we want to replace Visa, and Mastercard, and Wells Fargo, and Bitcoin, then I guess we better do the critically important research into scaling.

This seems like an obvious yes to me. Is there a down side? Because I don't see a down side.

Just for clarification, the primary focus of the research is how to scale Dash in view of the idea of far far greater (orders of magnitude greater) adoption, correct?

Sure, they will compare to the methods used by other tokens as well. I'm not threatened by that in the least.
 
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God, this is such an easy yes. I am so happy to see this proposal and, going forward, I hope to see a lot more like this!

Whether it's IOTAs Tangle or the tezos sandbox or the application of AI and neural networks, dash could greatly benefit from such research. Give us more!
 
Blockchain system is going to change your life from the way you transact business or manage assets. It is known as digital currency of modern era.
 
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