Re: [Bitcoin-development] side-chains & 2-way pegging (Re: is there a way to do bitcoin-staging?)

[Daniel Murrell <dsmurrell@gmail.com>]

I've already added it here:
http://www.opencryptocurrencyreview.com/papers/123/enabling-blockchain-innovations-with-pegged-sidechains

I made this site to allow discussions on exactly these sorts of things
to be publicly visible and easily discoverable in the future (this is
why I replied to all).

Please let me know what you think of the site.

Daniel

p.s. I'm not trying to monetize this site. I just tried to make
something I thought could be useful.

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 10:54 PM, Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org> wrote:
> For those following this thread, we have now written a paper
> describing the side-chains, 2-way pegs and compact SPV proofs.
> (With additional authors Andrew Poelstra & Andrew Miller).
>
> http://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf
>
> Adam
>
> On 16 March 2014 15:58, Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org> wrote:
>> So an update on 1-way pegging (aka bitcoin staging, explained in quoted text
>> at bottom): it turns out secure 2-way pegging is also possible (with some
>> bitcoin change to help support it).  The interesting thing is this allows
>> interoperability in terms of being able to move bitcoin into and out of a
>> side chain.  The side chains may have some different parameters, or
>> experimental things people might want to come up with (subject to some
>> minimum compatibility at the level of being able to produce an SPV proof of
>> a given form).
>>
>> At the time of the 1-way peg discussion I considered 2-way peg as desirable
>> and it seemed plausible with bitcoin changes, but the motivation for 1-way
>> peg was to make it less risky to make changes on bitcoin, so that seemed
>> like a catch-22 loop.  Also in the 2-way peg thought experiment I had not
>> realized how simple it was to still impose a security firewall in the 2-way
>> peg also.
>>
>>
>> So Greg Maxwell proposed in Dec last year a practically compact way to do
>> 2-way pegging using SPV proofs.  And also provided a simple argument of how
>> this can provide a security firewall.  (Security firewall means the impact
>> of security bugs on the side-chain is limited to the people with coins in
>> it; bitcoin holders who did not use it are unaffected). [1]
>>
>> How it works:
>>
>> 1. to maintain the 21m coins promise, you start a side-chain with no
>> in-chain mining subsidy, all bitcoin creation happens on bitcoin chain (as
>> with 1-way peg).  Reach a reasonable hash rate.  (Other semantics than 1:1
>> peg should be possible, but this is the base case).
>>
>> 2. you move coins to the side-chain by spending them to a fancy script,
>> which suspends them, and allows them to be reanimated by the production of
>> an SPV proof of burn on the side-chain.
>>
>> 3. the side-chain has no mining reward, but it allows you to mint coins at
>> no mining cost by providing an SPV proof that the coin has been suspended as
>> in 2 on bitcoin.  The SPV proof must be buried significantly before being
>> used to reduce risk of reorganization.  The side-chain is an SPV client to
>> the bitcoin network, and so maintains a view of the bitcoin hash chain (but
>> not the block data).
>>
>> 4. the bitcoin chain is firewalled from security bugs on the side chain,
>> because bitcoin imposes the rule that no more coins can be reanimated than
>> are currently suspend (with respect to a given chain).
>>
>> 5. to simplify what they hypothetical bitcoin change would need to consider
>> and understand, after a coin is reanimated there is a maturity period
>> imposed (say same as fresh mined coins).  During the maturity period the
>> reanimation script allows a fraud proof to spend the coins back.  A fraud
>> bounty fee (equal to the reanimate fee) can be offered by the mover to
>> incentivize side-chain full nodes to watch reanimations and search for fraud
>> proofs.
>>
>> 6. a fraud proof is an SPV proof with a longer chain showing that the proof
>> of burn was orphaned.
>>
>> There are a few options to compress the SPV proof, via Fiat-Shamir transform
>> to provide a compact proof of amount work contained in a merkle tree of
>> proofs of work (as proposed by Fabien Coelho link on
>> http://hashcash.org/papers/) with params like 90% of work is proven.  But
>> better is something Greg proposed based on skip-lists organized in a tree,
>> where 'lucky' proofs of work are used to skip back further.  (Recalling that
>> if you search for a 64-bit leading-0 proof-of-work, half the time you get a
>> 65-bit, quarter 66-bit etc.)  With this mechanism you can accurately
>> prove the amount of proof of work in a compressed tree (rather than ~90%).
>>
>>
>> Apart from pegging from bitcoin to a side-chain, if a private chain is made
>> with same rules to the side-chain it becomes possible with some
>> modifications to the above algorithm to peg the side-chain to a private
>> chain.  Private chain meaning a chain with the same format but signature of
>> single server in place of hashing, and timestamping of the block signatures
>> in the mined side chain.  And then reactive security on top of that by full
>> nodes/auditors trying to find fraud proofs (rewrites of history relative to
>> side-chain mined time-stamp or approved double-spends).  The reaction is to
>> publish a fraud proof and move coins back to the side chain, and then
>> regroup on a new server.  (Open transactions has this audit + reactive model
>> but as far as I know does it via escrow, eg the voting pools for k of n
>> escrow of the assets on the private server.) I also proposed the same
>> reactive audit model but for auditable namespaces [4].
>>
>> Private chains add some possiblity for higher scaling, while retaining
>> bitcoin security properties.  (You need to add the ability for a user to
>> unilaterally move his coins to the side-chain they came from in event the
>> chain server refuses to process transactions involving them.  This appears
>> to be possible if you have compatible formats on the private chain and
>> side-chain).
>>
>>
>> This pegging discussion involved a number of #bitcoin-wizards, Greg Maxwell,
>> Matt Corallo, Pieter Wuille, Jorge Timon, Mark Freidenbach, Luke Dashjr. The
>> 2-way peg seems to have first been described by Greg.  Greg thought of
>> 2-way pegging in the context of ZK-SNARKS and the coinwitness thread [2].
>> (As a ZK-SNARK could compactly prove full validation of a side chain rules).
>>
>> There was also something seemingly similar sounding but not described in
>> detail by Alex Mizrahi in the context of color coins in this post [3].
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> [1] http://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/2013-12-18.txt
>> [2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277389.40
>> [3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277389.msg4167554#msg4167554
>> [4] http://www.cypherspace.org/p2p/auditable-namespace.html
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 08:08:07PM +0200, Adam Back wrote:
>>>
>>> Coming back to the staging idea, maybe this is a realistic model that
>>> could
>>> work.  The objective being to provide a way for bitcoin to move to a live
>>> beta and stable being worked on in parallel like fedora vs RHEL or
>>> odd/even
>>> linux kernel versions.
>>>
>>> Development runs in parallel on bitcoin 1.x beta (betacoin) and bitcoin
>>> 0.x
>>> stable and leap-frogs as beta becomes stable after testing.
>>>
>>> Its a live beta, meaning real value, real contracts.  But we dont want it
>>> to
>>> be an alt-coin with a floating value exactly, we want it to be bitcoin,
>>> but
>>> the bleeding edge bitcoin so we want to respect the 21 million coin limit,
>>> and allow coins to move between bitcoin and betacoin with some necessary
>>> security related restrictions.
>>>
>>> There is no mining reward on the betacoin network (can be merge mined for
>>> security), and the way you opt to move a bitcoin into the betacoin network
>>> is to mark it as transferred in some UTXO recognized way.  It cant be
>>> reanimated, its dead.  (eg spend to a specific recognized invalid address
>>> on
>>> the bitcoin network).  In this way its not really a destruction, but a
>>> move,
>>> moving the coin from bitcoin to betacoin network.
>>>
>>> This respects the 21 million coin cap, and avoids betacoin bugs flowing
>>> back
>>> and affecting bitcoin security or value-store properties.  Users may buy
>>> or
>>> swap betacoin for bitcoin to facilitate moving money back from betacoin to
>>> bitcoin.  However that is market priced so the bitcoin network is security
>>> insulated from beta.  A significant security bug in beta would cause a
>>> market freeze, until it is rectified.
>>>
>>> The cost of a betacoin is capped at one BTC because no one will pay more
>>> than one bitcoin for a betacoin because they could alternatively move
>>> their
>>> own coin.  The reverse is market priced.
>>>
>>> Once bitcoin beta stabalizes, eg say year or two type of time-frame, a
>>> decision is reached to promote 1.0 beta to 2.0 stable, the remaining
>>> bitcoins can be moved, and the old network switched off, with mining past
>>> a
>>> flag day moving to the betacoin.
>>>
>>> During the beta period betacoin is NOT an alpha, people can rely on it and
>>> use it in anger for real value transactions.  eg if it enables more script
>>> features, or coin coloring, scalabity tweaks etc people can use it.
>>> Probably for large value store they are always going to prefer
>>> bitcoin-stable, but applications that need the coloring features, or
>>> advanced scripting etc can go ahead and beta.
>>>
>>> Bitcoin-stable may pull validated changes and merge them, as a way to pull
>>> in any features needed in the shorter term and benefit from the betacoin
>>> validation.  (Testing isnt as much validation as real-money at stake
>>> survivability).
>>>
>>> The arguments are I think that:
>>>
>>> - it allows faster development allowing bitcoin to progress features
>>> faster,
>>>
>>> - it avoids mindshare dilution if alternatively an alt-coin with a hit
>>>  missing feature takes off;
>>>
>>> - it concentrates such useful-feature alt activities into one OPEN source
>>>  and OPEN control foundation mediated area (rather than suspected land
>>>  grabs on colored fees or such like bitcoin respun as a business model
>>>  things),
>>>
>>> - maybe gets the developers that would've been working on their pet
>>>  alt-coin, or their startup alt-coin to work together putting more
>>>  developers, testers and resources onto something with open control (open
>>>  source does not necessarily mean that much) and bitcoin mindshare
>>>  branding, its STILL bitcoin, its just the beta network.
>>>
>>> - it respects the 21 million limit, starting new mining races probably
>>>  dillutes the artificial scarcity semantic
>>>
>>> - while insulating bitcoin from betacoin security defects (I dont mean
>>>  betacoin as a testnet, it should have prudent rigorous testing like
>>>  bitcoin, just the very act of adding a feature creates risk that bitcoin
>>>  stable can be hesitant to take).
>>>
>>> Probably the main issue as always is more (trustable) very high caliber
>>> testers and developers.  Maybe if the alt-coin minded startups and
>>> developers donate their time to bitcoin-beta (or bitcoin-stable) for the
>>> bits they are missing, we'll get more hands to work on something of
>>> reusable
>>> value to humanity, in parallel with their startup's objectives and as a
>>> way
>>> for them to get their needed features, while giving back to the bitcoin
>>> community, and helping bitcoin progress faster.
>>>
>>> Maybe bitcoin foundation could ask for BTC donations to hire more
>>> developers
>>> and testers full time.  $1.5b of stored value should be interested to safe
>>> guard their value store, and develop the transaction features.
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 02:34:06AM -0400, Alan Reiner wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  This is exactly what I was planning to do with the
>>>>  inappropriately-named "Ultimate Blockchain Compression".  [...]
>>>>
>>>>  For it to really work, it's gotta be part of the mainnet validation
>>>>  rules, but no way it can be evaluated realistically without some kind of
>>>>  "staging".
>>>
>>>
>>>>  On 5/19/2013 11:08 AM, Peter Vessenes wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  I think this is a very interesting idea. As Bitcoiners, we often stuff
>>>>  things into the 'alt chain' bucket in our heads; I wonder if this idea
>>>>  works better as a curing period, essentially an extended version of the
>>>>  current 100 block wait for mined coins.
>
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