Abstract

Many projects in the SRG at the moment (HAT, UCN , contacts app, MirageOS for ARM , Jitsu, databox, signposts) are trying to give individuals an viable alternative to 3rd party centralised services and put them back in control of their personal data. However developing applications for the hostile edge network, with its heterogeneous hosts and networks, trust issues and poorly understood middle boxes is tricky. This is made worse by the fact that consensus algorithms are famously difficult to use, underspecified and based on decade old assumption about the internet. In this talklet, I will motivate Unanimous, a new consensus algorithm for the modern internet.

NB: This is a practice talk for EuroSys doctoral workshop next Tuesday, thus this 5 min talk will simply motivate a research direction instead of presenting complete solution.