Author: Joachim Strömbergson 2020-01-13 20:49:51
Published on: 2020-01-13T20:49:51+00:00
On Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Robin Linus shared a whitepaper for his proposed sidechain protocol named Coins. The protocol is designed for efficient payments at scale and proposes an efficient solution to the double-spending problem using a bitcoin-backed proof-of-stake. Validators vote on sidechain blocks with one-time signatures, forming a record that cannot be changed without destroying their collateral. Every user can become a validator by locking bitcoins and the sidechain's footprint within Bitcoin's blockchain is minimal. The protocol is a generic consensus mechanism allowing for arbitrary sidechain assets. Joachim Strömbergson replied to Robin stating that he finds this proposal uninteresting for two reasons. Firstly, it introduces a new token for each sidechain and suggests atomic swaps to be used for the exchange of the mainchain token with the sidechain token. Secondly, the security of the proposed system seems to be very fragile. If put on a niche chain where only few participants are interested in it, it's trivial for an attacker to be stronger than all legitimate users together. Robin replied back to Joachim explaining that his proposal was more like Ethereum vs. ERC20 tokens rather than Bitcoin vs. Altcoins, as the derivatives are not in competition with BTC but depend on it heavily. He stated that sidechain derivatives would be nothing but a means of transfer and the unit of account is still BTC. Furthermore, he discussed the cost of halting the chain and how to introduce an additional cost and let validators burn bitcoins for every on-chain vote. Joachim then replied back stating he cannot see any difference and advantage over doing the same with say Litecoin. Therefore your idea is as good as any other altcoin. In your case, someone else should indeed be able to create such a wallet in which the unit of account will be the new token. He concluded that from his current understanding, the only interesting sidechain model is the theoretical one with a two-way peg with Bitcoin, preserving the issuance policy of Bitcoin.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T23:08:59.318779+00:00