IOHK Calls Out Ethereum's Casper Protocol In Favor of Own "Ouroboros"

Based on two social discussions over Reddit, H.K.-based IOHK, the parent company of Cardano and Ethereum Classic blockchains, released a detailed comparison between Casper and Ouroboros, two proof-of-stake protocols.

IOHK pointed out the absence of published, publically available sources in the Casper protocol confirming its mode-of-operation or proving verifiable guarantees about the system.

In this regard, the foundation stated Casper provides "Much weaker guarantees" about the adversary stakes needed to operate the blockchain network, in addition to publishing several other points for proving their protocol as superior.

In the Ouroboros protocol, the participants' programs are continually defined by the system, including interactions, transactions, executions, and communications with others.

IOHK believes such a system is immensely well-defined and leaves nothing to "Interpretation or reader perspective." In contrast, the foundation states Casper has no such publically available documents or models present, rendering it "Impossible" to prove the "Correctness" of the Ethereum protocol.

In terms of ledger consensus, IOHK defines the Ouroboros protocol as "Proven" to liveness under clearly defined assumptions.

IOHK pointed out the authors of Casper themselves noted that "a wholly compromised block proposal mechanism will prevent Casper from finalizing new blocks," adding that certain versions of the Casper protocol, such as Casper FFG-RPJ, are "Incomplete" and unaccompanied by any verifiable security mechanisms.

IOHK compared its Hydra protocol to one of Ethereum's most-awaited updates - Sharding - a proposed mechanism that validates transactions via node clusters specific to defined geographies instead of the globe.

On paper, the protocol is primed to parabolically scale transactions as a large amount of processing power enters the system.

IOHK called out the Sharding update's lack of any documentation in terms of protocol description and quantifiable security proofs.