Recently Dan Larimer posted a nasty review of Cardano's consensus algorithm, "Ouroboros", criticizing it for being slow and a copy of the DPoS protocol that he invented in 2014. He was angry about not having been cited in the Cardano papers.
Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, replied to the article on Telegram:
- That's Dan Larimer doing what Dan Larimer does best * Claiming he invented everything and everything else is junk ...
He goes on to say that the proper way to develop a secure protocol is start from principles, define what security means, and then proceed to prove that your solution(s) satisfy that definition.
From that point it's a game of taking unrealistic assumptions and gradually making them practical and performant * And this is what we have been doing for a year-and-a-half * In an extremely systematic way * As can be demonstrated by all the revisions that we've pushed to ePrint
...
it's just extraordinary to me how people can be so profoundly naive about the process upon which one has to follow to ensure a protocol is properly designed * This is not a subjective process * This is a well-understood process which has given us modern cryptography * There are standards and benchmarks you have to adhere to
Dan, however, finds this view impractical to the real world, which he illustrates with some amazing comics:
He also criticized Charles's apparent idea that Proof of Work must be proven to satisfy the definition of a secure protocol, and then proof of stake must be proven to also satisfy that definition. I'm not sure thats what Charles actually meant. If we are lucky he will clarify in a response response response! ;-)
UPDATE on Jan 11:
The IOHK team has responded directly to Dan Larimer's criticism on their blog:
https://iohk.io/blog/on-the-ouroboros-design-how-rigour-and-engineering-are-essential-for-critical-infrastructure/
A blog post on the Steemit website appeared recently making a number of claims regarding Ouroboros. The article contains several factual inaccuracies... While pointing out inaccuracies in the blog, we take the opportunity to highlight some of the general approaches followed in the design of Ouroboros and in the related research efforts that are currently underway at IOHK.