In 2018, a paper was distributed by a pseudonymous group named Team Rocket that proposed a new class of consensus protocol named “Avalanche.” It offers a solution to combine all the benefits of Classical consensus (speed, scalability energy efficiency) and the decentralization of Nakamoto consensus (robust and decentralized). Then the Classical protocols can be generalized to behave probabilistically and gain performance improvements as a result. The Avalanche consensus was born!
It’s a probabilistic protocol like the Satoshi Nakamoto consensus. The Avalanche consensus uses probability to make the chance of error as small as possible and all parts of Avalanche are configurable by validators on custom subnets.
For two years Avalabs works to build Avalanche. It’s an open-source platform with an highly scalable ecosystem, interoperable and secure where the main goal will be to develop decentralized finance applications.
If you need more detail, you can read: Avalanche consensus explanation
When does the story start ?
On May 16, 2018 an article named “Snowflake to Avalanche: A Novel Metastable Consensus Protocol Family for Cryptocurrencies” was published by the Team Rocket on the website https://ipfs.io/ which is a protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system.
Less than 24 hours later Emin Gün Sirer (founder and CEO of Ava Labs) reacted on twitter as follow:
Thereafter Emin Gün Sirer founded Ava Labs in 2018 and one year later, he published in collaboration with the Team Rocket a revision of the original paper on https://arxiv.org on June 21, 2019.
Who is hidden behind the Team Rocket ?
As for Satoshi Nakamoto, where Satoshi is the name of the main character in Pokemon. The Team Rocket is an obvious reference to Pokemon. This time it seems implicit that we are dealing with a team, while for Bitcoin we have never been able to find out if a single individual or a team is behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Team Rocket (t-rocket@protonmail.com) uses protonmail as an email service provider which is known to preserve anonymity.
There is a twitter account named “734mrock37” which means Team Rocket in leet speak. As a comparison Emin Gün Sirer also uses leet for his pseudonym: “el33th4xor”. The Team Rocket twitter account published only two tweets : the first one to link the original paper and the second one to link the revised paper.
Emin Gün Sirer is the closest person to the Team Rocket, some say he’s a part of it. Regardless, he is one of the few who know the truth.
Why pseudonymity matter in the blockchain field ?
One of the biggest mysteries behind the Bitcoin is the fact that nobody really knows for sure who is hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and speculation continues to this day.
Pseudonymity consists of using a pseudonym and not revealing your true identity. But still you can maintain it over time and develop a reputation on it. Pseudonymity provides freedom of speech. It provides accountability and above all it forces opponents to attack ideas rather than a person.
Regarding Bitcoin, the pseudonymity of its creator is one of the reasons for its success. The future will tell if Team Rocket and Project Avalanche will have the same success.
