Author: Matt Bell 2019-01-19 05:35:43
Published on: 2019-01-19T05:35:43+00:00
The context of the conversation is about a design for Bitcoin sidechains using the Tendermint BFT consensus protocol, which is commonly used to build proof-of-stake networks. The design is very similar to Blockstream's Liquid sidechain, since Tendermint consensus is not far off from Liquid's "strong federation" consensus. The designer clarifies that the design does not specify the source of voting power, so it is agnostic to whatever system one wants to derive stake or validator set membership from. ZmnSCPxj proposes an idea of "mainstake" where the stakes used to weigh voting power are UTXOs on the Bitcoin blockchain. He explains that this is more interesting than a blockchain having its own token that is self-attesting (which is insecure). He suggests that the sidechain network might accept potential stakers on the mainchain, if the staker proves the existence of a mainchain transaction with a specific output. The sidechain network could then use the value of the output as the weight of the vote of that stake.The designer finds ZmnSCPxj's idea of timelocking Bitcoin interesting and is eager to find a solution where holding Bitcoin is enough to get voting power. He notes that there may be an issue with the fact that the Bitcoin is not slashable (although their voting power is), meaning a validator who double-signs cannot have their Bitcoin removed from them. However, their UTXO can be blacklisted which makes their attack costly since they lose out on the time-value of their stake.The current thinking for the source of stake is to pay out stake to Bitcoin merged-miners although the designer will definitely do some more thinking about timelocked Bitcoin as stake. The GitHub repository contains a simplified implementation of this sidechain design.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T16:41:01.424844+00:00