The Stellar Development Foundation organized the Workshop on Heterogeneous Trust in Distributed Systems (HTDS) in October, bringing together 30 researchers to explore consensus mechanisms where validators independently choose which peers to trust—a key feature of Stellar and other networks.
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) hosted its first scientific research workshop, the Workshop on Heterogeneous Trust in Distributed Systems (HTDS), in Princeton on October 26th, organized with cryptographer Christian Cachin. The workshop explored heterogeneous trust—a consensus model where validators make independent judgments about which other validators to trust, exemplified by Stellar's validator selection mechanism. Unlike Proof-of-Stake or Proof-of-Work systems, heterogeneous trust networks avoid capital lockup and computational overhead while leveraging real-world reputation. The workshop attracted approximately 30 researchers and 10 speakers from leading universities and companies, addressing open research questions about efficient consensus implementation, cryptographic adaptations, and applications beyond consensus protocols. Recordings of all talks are now available on the SDF's YouTube channel.
