Draft:Yonatan Sompolinsky
Israeli computer scientist
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Yonatan Sompolinsky is an Israeli computer scientist known for his research on blockchain scalability and consensus protocols. He is the creator of the GHOST protocol, which influenced Ethereum's fork-choice rule,[1] and the founder of the Kaspa cryptocurrency.[2]
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Comment: Large number of red links suggests possible LLM use —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 16:18, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Yonatan Sompolinsky | |
|---|---|
| Known for | GHOST protocol, PHANTOM, GHOSTDAG, DAG-KNIGHT, Kaspa |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cryptography, Distributed computing, Cryptocurrency |
| Institutions | |
Career
Sompolinsky conducted research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and subsequently at Harvard University's Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS).[3]
He founded DAGLabs, a cryptocurrency research and development company, which was dissolved around the time of Kaspa's launch in November 2021, transitioning the project to community-led development.[4]
Research contributions
GHOST protocol (2013/2015)
Sompolinsky, together with Aviv Zohar, proposed the GHOST (Greedy Heaviest Observed Sub-Tree) protocol for secure high-rate transaction processing in Bitcoin-like systems. The protocol modifies Bitcoin's longest-chain rule by weighing the entire sub-tree of blocks rather than just the longest path, improving security under high block rates.[1]
The GHOST protocol was referenced in Ethereum's design; Ethereum's fork-choice rule (LMD-GHOST, or Latest Message Driven GHOST) is a modified version adapted for proof-of-stake.[5]
SPECTRE (2016)
With Yoad Lewenberg and Aviv Zohar, Sompolinsky proposed SPECTRE (Serialization of Proof-of-work Events: Confirming Transactions via Recursive Elections), a blockDAG protocol that provides fast transaction confirmation through pairwise ordering rather than a total block ordering.[6]
PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG (2018/2021)
With Shai Wyborski and Aviv Zohar, Sompolinsky proposed PHANTOM and its practical greedy approximation GHOSTDAG. The protocols generalize Nakamoto consensus from a blockchain to a blockDAG, enabling high block rates without the orphan-rate problem that limits single-chain systems. The work was published at the ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT) in 2021.[7]
GHOSTDAG is the consensus protocol deployed in the Kaspa cryptocurrency.[2]
DAG-KNIGHT (2022)
With Michael Sutton, Sompolinsky proposed DAG-KNIGHT, described as the first permissionless proof-of-work protocol with no a priori in-protocol bound on network latency. The protocol infers network conditions from the DAG topology rather than requiring pre-configured parameters.[8] The paper was published through Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society.[3]
Selected publications
- Sompolinsky, Y.; Zohar, A. (2015). "Secure High-Rate Transaction Processing in Bitcoin". Financial Cryptography and Data Security. DOI.
- Sompolinsky, Y.; Lewenberg, Y.; Zohar, A. (2016). "SPECTRE: A Fast and Scalable Cryptocurrency Protocol". IACR ePrint. ePrint 2016/1159.
- Sompolinsky, Y.; Wyborski, S.; Zohar, A. (2021). "PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG: A Scalable Generalization of Nakamoto Consensus". ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2021), pp. 57–70. DOI.
- Sompolinsky, Y.; Sutton, M. (2022). "The DAG KNIGHT Protocol: A Parameterless Generalization of Nakamoto Consensus". IACR ePrint. ePrint 2022/1494.
See also
- Kaspa (cryptocurrency)
- BlockDAG
- Blockchain
- Proof of work
- Nakamoto consensus