The canonical version of the dynamics was established by Thomas Thiemann, who defined an anomaly-free Hamiltonian operator and showed the existence of a mathematically consistent background-independent theory. The covariant, or "spin foam", version of the dynamics was developed jointly over several decades by research groups in France, Canada, UK, Poland, and Germany. It was completed in 2008, leading to the definition of a family of transition amplitudes, which in the classical limit can be shown to be related to a family of truncations of general relativity. The finiteness of these amplitudes was proven in 2011. It requires the existence of a positive cosmological constant, which is consistent with observed acceleration in the expansion of the Universe.