Informal systems is one of the stewards of the open-source software of the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem. For instance, we are stewarding CometBFT, a state machine replication engine around Tendermint consensus. In addition, Informal is collaborating with other companies on the design and implementation of distributed systems and algorithms.
In this talk, I will give an overview over recent projects on design and analysis of distributed algorithms, and on our approach to use our own specification language Quint, to specify, simulate, and test distributed systems. The application domain considered in this talk is mostly revolving around challenges of scaling Ethereum (rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap). We will see how classic concepts from distributed computing theory such as state machine replication, optimistic concurrency control, and consistent cuts, show up in the context of current blockchain projects.
