Published on: 2021-01-01T00:05:59+00:00
Ruben Somsen has proposed a fully decentralized two-way peg sidechain design called Softchains. This design requires a soft fork to activate new sidechains and utilizes Proof-of-Work Fraud Proofs (PoW FP) as the consensus mechanism for validating disputed blocks. All Softchains are validated by everyone through PoW FP consensus. If a user wants to directly use a specific Softchain, they need to run it as a full node to achieve fast consensus.Peg-ins occur by freezing coins on the mainchain and assigning them to a Softchain, while peg-outs involve creating a mainchain transaction that points to a peg-out transaction on a Softchain and waiting for enough mainchain confirmations. However, Softchain consensus still requires validation from mainchain users, and consensus bugs can have negative consequences. These bugs could potentially cause a chain split in mainchain consensus or invalidate a peg-out right after it becomes accepted on the mainchain, thus splitting consensus.There are potential risks associated with Softchains, such as non-deterministic consensus bugs and major reorgs. To mitigate these risks, Ruben suggests basing Softchain designs on Bitcoin Core and implementing a rule disallowing reorgs larger than half the peg-out time. It is important for each Softchain to produce a significant amount of PoW to ensure security and prevent cost reductions in creating forks. Merged mining could aid in maintaining security, but it would place an additional burden on miners for validation.In conclusion, the Softchains proposal offers the potential for more opt-in block space and the ability to introduce chains with different consensus rules. However, there are significant risks involved, and Ruben welcomes feedback and ideas on how to address these issues and ensure maximum safety.
Updated on: 2023-08-02T02:59:13.920871+00:00