Presentation given by Gavin Wood at the NYC Ethereum meetup on the 21st of November 2014 concerning the concept of relative truth and the need to rethink MMA system architecture with the paradigm of incomplete truth.

1. Relative Truth
Living without (as much) authority
Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder Ethereum

2. Absolute Truth
For any given time, there exists an authoritative state.
This is defined by an authority, e.g.:
server, block chain

3. Example
The Truth
(database)
Authority
New Order
Order book
Execute
Order
Cancel
Order
Seller Buyer
Executes or not?
Authority decides

4. Advantages
For any given point in time, all information in system is
consistent:
State is unambiguous.
Comes at a great cost

5. Problems
Scaling tough
Central point of control
Single point of failure
Exacerbates security problems

6. And…
As a model, doesn’t properly reflect reality:
“Square peg, circular hole”
Ubiquitous Absolute Truth tenable in the long term?

7. Why?
Inflated version of that to which we’re accustomed…
So accustomed that we often forget about the
alternatives.

8. Ubiquitous Absolute
Truth is expensive.
Save it for the block chain

9. Relative Truth
Each node keeps its own dynamically updated record of
their knowledge.
No node has complete knowledge.
All nodes internally self-consistent.

10. Example
Seller Buyer
Authority
New Order
Please finalise
Swap assets
Some Truth
(database)
Swap assets
Important
Truth only
(database)
Some Truth
(database)

11. JIT Consensus
Consolidation of disparate truths only happens when
needed.

12. Advantages
Progression
User gets actionable content as it becomes available
Scaling
Bottlenecks become O(1), not O(n)
Reliability
Perfectly graceful degradation
Private & Secure
Avoids bestowing unneeded authority

13. Problems
New paradigm for MMA development.
Means rethinking and rearchitecting.
New APIs required
(e.g. Ethereum’s Whisper, a secure, lossy, multi-DHT)

14. Not new…
Fast-paced multiplayer games
Fully-decentralised file-sharing networks

15. …but destined for fame
Another piece in the puzzle in the quest for the
Decentralised Application toolkit.

16. Questions?