Papers
Here you can download and read works we and others have published on Holochain technology.
Holochain: Distributed Coordination by Scaled Consent, not Global Consensus
Eric Harris-Braun, Arthur Brock, Paul d'Aoust. Version 2.0, published 8 November 2024.
We present a generalized system for large-scale distributed coordination that does not rely on global consensus, explicating the problem instead through the lens of scaling consent. After establishing initial axioms, we illustrate their application for coordination in games, then provide a formal outline of the necessary integrity guarantees and functional components needed to deliver those guarantees. Finally, we provide a fairly detailed, high-level, technical specification for our operating implementation for scaling consent.
Beyond Byzantium: The Players of Ludos
Eric Harris-Braun. Published 1 July 2024.
A more informal paper than the official white paper, introducing the rationale for scaled consent and describing the design of Holochain through an allegory.
Holochain: Scalable Agent-centric Distributed Computing
Eric Harris-Braun, Nicolas Luck, and Arthur Brock. Published 15 February 2018.
We present a scalable, agent-centric distributed computing platform. We use a formalism to characterize distributed systems, show how it applies to some existing distributed systems, and demonstrate the benefits of shifting from a data-centric to an agent-centric model. We present a detailed formal specification of the Holochain system, along with an analysis of its systemic integrity, capacity for evolution, total system computational complexity, implications for use-cases, and current implementation status.
