PoAge Is Trustless

Canopy's Proof-of-Age

Canopy introduces a unique mechanism to allow trustless syncing of the blockchain:

Verifiable-Delay-Functions are a cryptographic primitive that requires the execution of sequential work that is fundamentally resistant to hardware speedups.

In other words...VDFs are a reliable proxy for elapsed time. This enables Canopy to reliably utilize a fork-choice rule of the oldest (age) chain, allowing a syncing node strong subjectivity when choosing between two forks.

TL;DR: Like PoW — Proof-of-Age enables trustless syncing, but without the energy costs!

The Result: NestBFT

NestBFT uses Proof-of-Stake for:

• Energy-efficient consensus

• Simple and self-reinforcing 'sybil attack' protection

• Instant finality with 20-second blocks

• Economic stability via bonding

... and Proof-of-Age for:

• Verifiable mitigation of Long-Range-Attacks

• An additional layer of security against emerging threats

• Extending security to Nested Chains by offering decentralized Checkpointing-As-A-Service

The combination of the two ensures NestBFT is fundamentally more trustless than legacy PoS systems.

Since trust is involved with Ethereum's Gasper and Tendermint's BFT, how much of Web3 is truly trustless?

Read the full specification of Canopy's Consensus!