Virgil Griffith

Virgil Griffith

In service to the mathematical underpinnings of the Information Integration Theory of Consciousness (IIT), we introduce four measures of integration based on the partial information decomposition framework. We compare our measures to current IIT practice in simple deterministic networks. We find synergy-based measures more suitable for IIT's use-case than current practice. Outside IIT, these measures could also be useful as non-IIT-related measures of complexity within discrete dynamical systems.

Vitalik Buterin, Virgil Griffith

We introduce Casper, a proof of stake-based finality system which overlays an existing proof of work blockchain. Casper is a partial consensus mechanism combining proof of stake algorithm research and Byzantine fault tolerant consensus theory. We introduce our system, prove some desirable features, and show defenses against long range revisions and catastrophic crashes. The Casper overlay provides almost any proof of work chain with additional protections against block reversions.

Virgil Griffith, Yang Xu, Carlo Ratti

We collect and analyze the darkweb (a.k.a. the "onionweb") hyperlink graph. We find properties highly dissimilar to the well-studied world wide web hyperlink graph; for example, our analysis finds that >87% of darkweb sites never link to another site. We compare our results to prior work on world-wide-web and speculate about reasons for their differences. We conclude that in the term "darkweb", the word "web" is a connectivity misnomer. Instead, it is more accurate to view the darkweb as a set of largely isolated dark silos.