WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

This report presents LibraBFT, a robust and efficient state machine replication system designed for the Libra Blockchain. LibraBFT is based on HotStuff, a recent protocol that leverages several decades of scientific advances in Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) and achieves the strong scalability and security properties required by internet settings. LibraBFT further refines the HotStuff protocol to introduce explicit liveness mechanisms and provides a concrete latency analysis. To drive the integration with the Libra Blockchain, this document provides specifications extracted from a fully-functional simulator. These specifications include state replication interfaces and a communication framework for data transfer and state synchronization among participants. Finally, this report provides a formal safety proof that induces criteria to detect misbehavior of BFT nodes, coupled with a simple reward and punishment mechanism.

We present Move, a safe and flexible programming language for the Libra Blockchain. Move is an executable bytecode language used to implement custom transactions and smart contracts. The key feature of Move is the ability to define custom resource types with semantics inspired by linear logic: a resource can never be copied or implicitly discarded, only moved between program storage locations. These safety guarantees are enforced statically by Move’s type system. Despite these special protections, resources are ordinary program values — they can be stored in data structures, passed as arguments to procedures, and so on. First-class resources are a very general concept that programmers can use not only to implement safe digital assets but also to write correct business logic for wrapping assets and enforcing access control policies. The safety and expressivity of Move have enabled us to implement significant parts of the Libra protocol in Move, including Libra coin, transaction processing, and validator management.

The Libra Blockchain is a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility cryptocurrency that will have the ability to serve as an efficient medium of exchange for billions of people around the world. We present a proposal for the Libra protocol, which implements the Libra Blockchain and aims to create a financial infrastructure that can foster innovation, lower barriers to entry, and improve access to financial services. To validate the design of the Libra protocol, we have built an open-source prototype implementation — Libra Core — in anticipation of a global collaborative effort to advance this new ecosystem.

To get a deeper understanding of the lifecycle of a Libra transaction, we will follow a transaction on its journey from being submitted to a Libra validator to being committed to the Libra Blockchain. We will then “zoom-in” on each logical component of a validator and take a look at its interactions with other components.

The Libra Blockchain is a cryptographically authenticated distributed database, and it is based on the Libra protocol. This document briefly describes the key concepts of the Libra protocol. For a detailed description of all the elements of the Libra protocol, refer to the Libra Blockchain technical paper

Blockchain technology is hot right now! I've devised a 2 month study plan to help you learn how blockchains and cryptocurrency works. This is the kind of curriculum I'd create for myself to learn, but I'm open sourcing it for you guys since I love you. We'll start with cryptography, move on to Bitcoin, then Ethereum, other cryptos, and finally Decentralized Applications.

Curriculum for this video: https://github.com/llSourcell/Learn_Blockchain_in_2_months