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Title details for Proof of Stake by Vitalik Buterin - Available

Proof of Stake

The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains

by Vitalik Buterin
Nathan Schneider
ebook
4 of 4 copies available
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4 of 4 copies available
The new book from one of TIME's 2021 most influential people
Author was in Forbes 30 Under 30 Hall of Fame
"A crucial contribution to development of a new technology that will impact all of our lives.” –Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast and author of The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
“Vitalik Buterin is one of the most influential creators of our generation....Like most of his work, it is sure to become a must-read.”–Camila Russo, author of The Infinite Machine, founder of The Defiant

The ideas behind Ethereum in the words of its founder, describing a radical vision for more than a digital currency—reinventing organizations, economics, and democracy itself in the age of the internet.
When he was only nineteen years old, in late 2013, Vitalik Buterin published a visionary paper outlining the ideas behind what would become Ethereum. He proposed to take what Bitcoin did for currency—replace government and corporate power with power shared among users—and apply it to everyday apps, organizations, and society as a whole. Now, less than a decade later, Ethereum is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency and serves as the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate in the metaverse, and decentralized autonomous organizations.
The essays in Proof of Stake have guided Ethereum’s community of radicals and builders. Here for the first time they are collected from across the internet for new readers. They reveal Buterin as a lively, creative thinker, relentlessly curious and adventuresome in exploring the consequences of his invention. His writing stands in contrast to the hype that so often accompanies crypto in the public imagination. He presents it instead as a fascinating set of social, economic, and political possibilities, opening a window into a conversation that far more of us could be having.
Media scholar Nathan Schneider provides introductions and notes.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 27, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781644212493

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781644212493
      • File size: 8789 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2022
      A wonky excursion into the world of cryptocurrency and computer-generated governance. Bitcoin uses an elaborate set of algorithms to provide "proof of work," showing that a computer has been active in its role of "mining" digital coinage. Ethereum, founded by Buterin (b. 1994), aims for "proof of stake"--i.e., that participants in its digital realm demonstrate their legitimacy by virtue of their holdings alone, buying and selling them ethically without trying to game the system. In this collection of writings, mostly blog posts and talks, the famed billionaire who sleeps on other people's couches takes on heady matters: the nature of the blockchain mechanism that safeguards crypto transactions and that may have broader uses as furthering a "way to pool together our money and support public projects that help create the society we want to see"; the seigniorage aspect of cryptocurrency; the extensibility of crypto techniques to develop decentralized business agreements and contracts. Blockchains, the be-all and end-all in some cryptolibertarian systems, are in Buterin's eyes merely convenient means to ends, "simply marginally better than the next available tool for the job." Nevertheless, they have allowed the author to reimagine Ethereum as not just a marketplace, but a platform for social change: more equitable justice provided by a kind of open-source judiciary, a means of decentralizing power to put it into the hands (and keyboards) of ordinary people, not governments or corporations. Buterin is an earnest and decidedly technical writer; it helps to know mathematics, economics, and computer science to follow some of his denser arguments. Yet he has a playful side, too, as when he unveils a game called 1.58-dimensional chess," so named "because the twenty-seven open squares are chosen according to a pattern based in the Sierpinski triangle." Numerate computer whizzes are the key audience, but there's something for lesser mortals on most pages.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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