Casper Labs

Overview

Casper is the first future-proof blockchain launched off the Casper CBC specification. It is a layer 1 blockchain and Turing-complete smart contract platform utilizing a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm and backed by WebAssembly(WASM). Casper is a permissionless, decentralized public blockchain and aims to accelerate the adoption of blockchain by businesses and enterprises.

About CasperLabs

Casper claims to be the first blockchain built for enterprise adoption and is designed to boost developer and enterprise adoption of blockchain technology. As it is a future-proof blockchain protocol, its architecture ensures that the network continually develops to meet the evolving need of the users and that it is accessible to developers of any background. Casper utilizes CSPR, its native token, to pay gas fees for on-chain actions and reward the validators who participate in the PoS consensus mechanism.

It is a purpose-built blockchain for businesses and offers the following benefits:

• It is one of the most secure Layer-1 blockchains.
• It is entirely customizable from the infrastructure layer up.
• It is flexible enough to adapt to the changing requirements of users.
• Possesses energy-efficient standards for blockchain usage.
• Scales with your business
• It is one of the most accessible blockchains for developers who do not code in Solidity.

Architecture 

A group of validators assists the Casper network in verifying the transactions and upholding the network. Casper permits the geographical decentralization of validators, in contrast to Proof-of-Work networks that require centralized validators for economies of scale. Casper validators participate in the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism by validating transactions based on staked tokens and earning CSPR rewards.

Consensus mechanism 

Casper utilizes an advanced Proof-of-Stake model known as the Highway. It addresses the scalability and performance issues that have majorly affected blockchain adoption so far. The highway protocol is based on the original Casper CBC specification but with significant enhancements. It adopts certain beneficial aspects of classic Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus protocols but contains two major improvements. First, Casper Highway facilitates the network to achieve higher thresholds of finality which means that more blocks are finalized, and validators allow to add them to the blockchain. Second, Highway achieves flexibility by expressing block finality, unlike typical BFT models.

Key features 

CasperLabs blockchain network attempts to foster business operations through its unique features, such as

• Upgradeable contracts
• On-chain governance
• Predictable network fees
• Privacy flexibility
• Developer-friendly languages
• WebAssembly support
• Future-proof

Technical design 

Casper carries out the network communication through the following methods:

1. Identity: Each node in the network has an identity known as network identity(ID) formulated on the fingerprint of the public key of a self-signed TLS certificate.
2. Inter-node connections: If a node wants to connect to another node with a known endpoint, it establishes a TLS connection to the endpoint’s address.
3. Network: Generally, any node can connect with any other node within the network, leading to a fully connected network.
4. Gossiping is the process of distributing a value across the whole network without sending it to each node directly. 
5. Requesting missing data: Nodes can also distribute data across the network by requesting missing data from peers if needed.
6. Node discovery: When each node periodically gossips its public address, it leads to node discovery.

You can further understand the architecture and design of Casper in its documentation.

Founders

• Mrinal Manohar - Chief Executive Officer
• Medha Parlikar - Chief Technology Officer
• Cliff Sarkin - Chief Operating Officer
• Dr. Daniel Kane - Consensus Protocol Advisor