6.9.21
Concurrency, State, and Cardano
After months of testing with smaller groups, the Cardano public testnet was recently upgraded to support smart contracts. The surge of activity that followed included many dApp tests and experiments, with developers eager to perform a large-scale test and show off their hard work. This effort has created a ferocious discussion around some of the design decisions behind Cardano. Many critics are using this discussion as an opportunity to point to Cardano, misrepresent the problem, and ultimately underestimate the potential of one of the giants of the crypto industry. Misconceptions are now floating around suggesting that Cardano only supports one transaction per block, only one user can interact with a smart contract at a time, and that cardano is ultimately destined for centralization. All of these are inaccurate, and we present below a new framing and the start of a few solutions that dApp builders might choose.
Labels: Blockchain, Concurrency, Cryptocurrency, IOHK
5.9.21
Reading list
Kevin Doran wrote to me requesting a reading list on logic. He recommends an introductory guide to logic by Peter Smith. Smith's appendix lists several textbooks on logic, but misses my two favourites.
- Jean-Yves Girard, Yves Lafont, and Paul Taylor. Proofs and Types. CUP, 1989. The master logician (discoverer of System F and linear logic), aided by two superb computer scientists, covers the basics. Explains additive and multiplicative proof rules, and the fundamentals of propositions as types.
- Jean van Heijenoort, From Frege to Gödel A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931, Harvard University Press, 1967. My favourite entry is the correspondence between Russell and Frege---it is only a few pages long and so a quick read; don't skip van Heijenoort's introduction. See also Anita Feferman's biography of van Heijenoort, who lived quite a life: he served as Trotsky's secretary and was shot to death by a jealous lover.
Labels: Formal Methods, Logic
