On 19th November 2018, the official RFI- Request for information, released a five-page RFI. They announced that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is planning to conduct two days intensive workshop in February 2019. The tentative date for this workshop by far is 14th and 15th February 2019, in Arlington, VA. The aim of this workshop is to analyze and discover technologies for distributed consensus.
In this RFI released by the agency’s Information Innovation Office (I2O):
‘Permissionless systems are illustrated in the paper as protocols. As per these protocols any individual can join in the computation.’
Although the federal agency has already amassed a substantial amount of research in the field, still the aim of this two-day workshop is to probe into the less examined avenues.
‘The federal agency is interested in “several, less-explored avenues of permissionless distributed consensus protocols.’ -As stated by the federal agency.
The further aim of this workshop is to cover three main topics which form the three individual sessions at the agency workshop:
The first topic deals with the building large-scale permissionless distributed consensus which does not involve any use of money. The report says-
‘Permissionless distributed protocols must incentivize various aspects of participation in the protocol,” noting Bitcoin (BTC) mining as an example system.’ -As stated in the five-page RFI- Request for an information report.
The second agenda of the workshop deals with the economic-based security models for distributed computation protocols.
‘The second topic seeks the methods that leverage rigorous economic notions to advance theories of security for distributed, permissionless computation protocols.”- As stated in the five-page RFI- Request for an information report.
Last but not the least the third topic of this two-day workshop deals with exploring the “centralities of distributed consensus protocols.”
‘Novel analyses, methods to analyze and/or address the centralization of a distributed consensus protocol,” but also “unintended centralities and/or associated mitigations.” -As stated in the five-page RFI- Request for an information report.
Further in the five pages RFI report it was stated that:
‘Technologies for distributed consensus protocols have been revolutionized by their prominent role in cryptocurrency and Blockchain technologies. These technologies have dramatic implications for the security and resilience of critical data storage and computation tasks, including for the Department of Defense.’
The objectives of this workshop resonate with the concerns towards the Blockchain shown by government agencies on the worldwide level. Further along the same lines, it was reported that:
‘German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) is planning to use Blockchain to fight tax evasion.’ – As reported by German News Outlet on 22nd November 2018.
Crypto- Chat developer ITAMCO was awarded a grant by DARPA in May 2017, for developing an encrypted Blockchain based messaging and transaction platform for the U.S. military.