The 2nd International Workshop on DAG-based Distributed Ledger Technologies, held on May 31, 2024, at Trinity College Dublin, explored the potential of Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology to overcome the limitations of traditional blockchains.
The workshop, co-organized by the IOTA Foundation, featured a keynote by Shai Wyborski, a researcher at Kaspa, emphasizing the scalability and efficiency advantages of DAGs over blockchains. Blockchains, according to Wyborski, suffer from high rates of discarded transactions and limited parallelism, hindering their performance.
DAG-based distributed ledgers, also known as blockDAGs, address these issues by allowing each block to reference multiple preceding blocks, creating a more intricate yet efficient structure. Wyborski offered insights into various blocked implementations and stressed the importance of parameterless protocols that can dynamically adapt to network conditions.
Interactive sessions delved deeper into specific applications of DAG technology. One presentation discussed secure data transmission for low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices, while another explored the use of shared objects in Sui smart contracts.
Teppei Okada from Ritsumeikan University presented a method for preventing content poisoning attacks in Information-centric Networking (ICN) by leveraging IOTA’s tamper-proof ledger.
The workshop concluded with a comprehensive overview of DAG-based consensus protocols by Mayank Raikwar and researchers from the IOTA Foundation. Their presentation analyzed the impact of these protocols on performance and their trade-offs regarding consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.
The Beyond the Chain workshop highlighted the promising potential of DAGs to revolutionize distributed ledger technology. With continued research and development, DAGs could become the foundation for future scalable and secure DLT applications. The workshop organizers look forward to next year’s event at the University of Pisa to witness further advancements in this field.