The Crypto Chronicles of Yonatan Sompolinsky — A Retelling by Captain Sats 𐤊

14 min readFeb 12, 2023

A landmark volume of internet sleuthing by one of the greatest minds of Kaspa, Captain Sats 𐤊. This retelling explores the citations, involvement, and works of one of the greatest OGs of crypto, Yonatan Sompolinsky.

Told from the eyes of a Captain, Mr. Sats 𐤊 plunges into the exotic realms of Google and the internet — where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With compelling images, critical citations, and profound imagination, Captain Sats 𐤊 brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of crypto.

Captain Sats 𐤊

The Crypto Chronicles

The $kas founder, Yonatan Sompolinsky, pops up all over the place in crypto. Just take a look at his Scholar page . Thousands of citations of his research .

scholar.google.co.il/citations?user…

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Yonatan Sompolinskypostdoc @ Harvard University — Cited by 3,174 — computer science — distributed systems — mechanism design — cryptohttps://scholar.google.co.il/citations?user=hTWnlpYAAAAJ&hl=en

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lets Start with the most obvious ones many of you will be familiar with. $eth #ethereum white and yellow paper. Located here

ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/
ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/pa…

just Ctrl + f his name to confirm .

#ETH

Ethereum Whitepaper | ethereum.orgAn introductory paper to Ethereum, published in 2013 before its launch.https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/

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Next up #Polkadot .

$dot is Another well known and respected project from Gavin Wood. Yonatan appears in their Grandpa paper here :

github.com/w3f/consensus/…

consensus/grandpa.pdf at master · w3f/consensusConsensus for Web3. Contribute to w3f/consensus development by creating an account on GitHub.https://github.com/w3f/consensus/blob/master/pdf/grandpa.pdf

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Ok…not impressed yet? fine…Let’s move on to $iota . You’ll find him in several #iota research papers if you do a little digging here :

iota.org/foundation/res…

the screenshot below is an example from their tangle 2.0 paper, but there are several where you’ll find him .

Research PapersLearn about research undertaken on topics related to The Tangle and IOTA related technologies.https://www.iota.org/foundation/research-papers

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next up. $avax . In a paper title when is spring coming

arxiv.org/pdf/2210.03423…

you may notice not just Yonatan, but another $kas legend , @DesheShai in this one .

Even the main #Avalanche twitter account posted about this paper.

Next up . Blocksec. The guys over at @BlockSecTeam do smart contract audits among other things.

Their paper Operation-level Concurrent Transaction Execution for Blockchains, cites both Yonatan and Shai.

arxiv.org/pdf/2211.07911…

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Enjoying yourself ? Great.

You’ll also appreciate the type of people that follows Yonatan on twitter. google is your friend here.

real #crypto OGs , and tells Me everything I need to know when these types follow him .

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Honestly, this is just scratching the surface. Have a browse through the Google scholar page and you‘ll see he pops up in some very interesting places.

scholar.google.co.il/citations?user…

would appreciate a retweet if you enjoyed this $kas chads. It took a bit of time .

I’ll be adding to this list as I find more.

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another one, this time #Algorand . Yonatan is referenced in the paper below Co authored by Yossi Gilad, who is CTO over at $algo

you’ll notice these are all different papers of his being referenced .

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Algorand | Proceedings of the 26th Symposium on Operating Systems Principleshttps://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3132747.3132757#sec-ref

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Here is a interesting one. You’ve all heard of Ericsson, right? Big company. Well take a look at this paper and see who you find.

Yep. He in papers in big brands too.

ericsson.com/en/reports-and…

Blockchain for IoT: architecture for scalable access in IoTOne of the technical challenges of having billions of devices deployed worldwide is the ability to manage them. Although access management technologies exist in IoT, they are based on centralized mode…https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/research-papers/blockchain-meets-iot-an-architecture-for-scalable-access-management-in-iot

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Worth mentioning same research paper appears on the large south Korea site called Naver. It is like Google over there.

네이버 학술정보Blockchain Meets IoT: An Architecture for Scalable Access Management in IoThttps://academic.naver.com/article.naver?doc_id=436199259

Pretty cool right? Anyway, here is the $kas founder appearing in 3 research papers on the national library of medicine. (US gov site)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080687/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6120626/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6030263/

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Do you want more or are you bored?

Ok . Onwards. We’re all clearly enjoying ourselves with this nerd fest. here he is on the National science foundation. Another US gov website.

par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/…

$kas

Moving back round to $eth, we have located him on the #ETH research website too . This is in addition to their white and yellow papers .

ethresear.ch/uploads/short-…

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Still on the subject of #ETH youll find him in various improvement proposals too . For example

eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2028

EIP-2028: Transaction data gas cost reductionhttps://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2028

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Another crypto project the $kas founders work is cited in is #decred $dcr . Not a small project by any means.

decred.org/research/nayak…

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You’ll also find him being used as a reference in peoples patent applications on Google

patents.google.com/patent/WO20201…

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020161530A1/en

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Moving on. Here he is on Adam Backs @Blockstream . (Yes that Adam back)

blockstream.com/strong-federat…

$kas

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Let’s pick up where we left off with another interesting one.

here is $kas founder being referenced by co founder of cosmos $atom , Ethan Buchman in his Byzantine fault tolerance paper.

atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstrea…

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Ok next up we have researcher, Rafael pass, from @ThunderCoreLab , referencing Yonatan in his Fruitchains paper.

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…

FruitChains | Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computinghttps://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3087801.3087809#sec-ref

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Ok here we go again $kas fam. Here is Yonatan referenced in a paper written by Sreeram Kannan, founder of @eigenlayer and David Tse , founder of @babylon_chain on cosmos.

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Prism | Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Securityhttps://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3319535.3363213

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Is anyone still reading? 🤣This is turning into quite a list.

Ok . Here is research scientist from @Mysten_Labs ( @SuiNetwork ) referencing $kas founder Yonatan Sompolinsky in his consensus in the age of blockchains paper.

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…

SoK | Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologieshttps://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3318041.3355458

Worth noting the paper above is also co authored by co founder of @CelestiaOrg , Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Azouvi from @protocollabs , Patrick McCorry @infura_io amd George Danezis also @Mysten_Labs chief scientist.

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$kas chads. Now we have IOHK , which is @Cardano ( $ada ) research and engineering company

they mention Zohar and Sompolinsky Ghost, back in 2016

iohk.io/en/blog/posts/…

this paper by iohk chief scientist Prof Aggelos Kiayias, references Yonatan

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Goodbye Mike and Some Thoughts About Bitcoin — IOHK BlogAn IOHK blog post by Charles Hoskinsonhttps://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2016/01/15/goodbye-mike-and-some-thoughts-about/

Decentralization Analysis of Pooling Behavior in Cardano Proof of Stake | Proceedings of the Third ACM International Conference on AI in Financehttps://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3533271.3561787#sec-ref

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are you not entertained? Well that’s fine.

How about senior director of engineering over at @Ripple , ( $xrp ) Brad Chase, and former ripple research engineer Ethan MacBrough, now @Coil referencing $kas founder?

arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07242…

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ok, next up. @monero $xmr a fun trip down memory lane

web.getmonero.org/2017/10/30/log…

getmonero.org/el/2017/11/05/…

getmonero.org/2019/03/25/log…

Blog: Logs for the Monero Research Lab Meeting Held on 2019–03–25Surae work, Sarang work, Output distribution and miscellaneoushttps://www.getmonero.org/2019/03/25/logs-for-the-Monero-Research-Lab-meeting-held-on-2019-03-25.html

Blog: Logs for the Monero Research Lab Meeting Held on 2017–10–30Multisig, hash-based accumulators, blockchain protocols, quantum-hard shuffle PRNG, educational outreach, and miscellaneoushttps://web.getmonero.org/2017/10/30/logs-for-the-Monero-Research-Lab-meeting-held-on-2017-10-30.html

Ιστολόγιο: Overview and Logs for the Dev Meeting Held on 2017–11–05Discussion of open PRs and issues, Bulletproofs, Monero Research Lab, MyMonero, Kovri, multisig, and miscellaneoushttps://www.getmonero.org/el/2017/11/05/overview-and-logs-for-the-dev-meeting-held-on-2017-11-05.html

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Ok want more? How about a relatively new, but big one. @Aptos_Network $apt .

aptoslabs.com/assets/pdf/220…

in this paper you will find Yonatan of $kas once more.

Paper is written by several authors including Alexander Spiegelman @AptosLabs and several from @Mysten_Labs .

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Here is former chief blockchain researcher over at @vechainofficial $vet talking about what scalability in blockchains really means. Unfortunately Yonatan isn’t in there.

medium.com/vechain-founda…

lol jk, of course he is

$kas

What does “scalability” really mean in Blockchain?By Zhijie Ren and Peter Zhouhttps://medium.com/vechain-foundation/what-does-scalability-really-mean-in-blockchain-b8b13b3181c6

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ok now $ftm @FantomFDN

$kas founder Yonatan Sompolinsky is listed on several papers here

fantom.foundation/fantom-researc……

Including their Whitepaper 2.0

arxiv.org/pdf/2108.01900……

written by their main guys ofc. Andre Cronje , Quan Nguyen (CTO), M Kong (CEO)

https://fantom.foundation/fantom-research-papers/

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Time for a break. We continue after this.

Interesting conversation between OGs all the way back in 2014. you’ll notice Nathan Wilcox CTO of zecash $zec talking about Ghost. Some interesting names mentioned including former CTO of @Blockstream and early $btc core developer Gregory Maxwell

github.com/zcash/zcash/is…

$kas

Research GHOST, the Ethereum-variant there-of, and DAG-chains · Issue #15 · zcash/zcashIn my opinion, this area of mining/consensus design space is probably outside our desired features list. However, it’d be prudent to understand them and the arguments that they may help with lo…https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/15

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All good? Right.

here is $kas founder in @Fetch_ai $fet yellow paper

fetch.ai/pdfs/Fetch.AI-…

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Gm. We continue. Here is $kas founder Yonatan in the $dusk whitepaper. Citing his optimal selfish mining strategies research.

dusk.network/uploads/dusk-w…

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Ok. Next up we have $sys @syscoin . Pretty well known project right?

Here is $kas founder Yonatan in their Whitepaper. Citing his scalable blockDAG protocol .

syscoin.org/syscoin3_white…

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moving on…many of the Chinese $kas fans will be familiar with @Conflux_Network $cfx .

here is Yonatan cited in their economic paper.

confluxnetwork.org/files/Conflux_…

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Who remembers @vergecurrency $xvg ? I know I do. Was hyped like crazy in the 2017 run.

here is $kas @KaspaCurrency founder Yonatan in their black paper

vergecurrency.com/static/blackpa…

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Another fun one. Here is $kas @KaspaCurrency founder Yonatan in a $btc magazine article all the way back in 2014 about $eth #Ethereum . Keep in mind this is way before #eth launched.

bitcoinmagazine.com/business/ether…

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/ethereum-next-generation-cryptocurrency-decentralized-application-platform-1390528211

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Circling back to @avalancheavax now.

How about a paper of $avax written by founders Emin Gün Sirer, Kevin Sekniqi, referencing $kas founder Yonatan Sompolinsky?

arxiv.org/pdf/1906.08936…

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Staying on the subject of $avax @avalancheavax .

here is a paper co authored by the avax founder way back in 2016 referencing $kas founder Yonatan not once, but 7 times.

usenix.org/system/files/c…

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Next we have the chief research officer over at $link @chainlink , Dahlia Malkhi and Alexander Spiegelman of @Aptos_Network Solidus paper .

this one references $kas @KaspaCurrency founder a few times.

cs.umd.edu/~kartik/papers…

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Here we have Ari Juels, chief scientist at chainlink labs $link , Christian Decker, researcher @Blockstream , Emin Gün Sirer, founder of $avax, and Dawn Song of Oasis labs ( $rose ) referencing $kas @KaspaCurrency founder Yonatan Sompolinsky.

link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…