Author: Swambo, Jacob 2020-06-22 15:07:41
Published on: 2020-06-22T15:07:41+00:00
The author of this post is introducing the concept of distributed, delegated pre-signed transactions (DDPST) and discussing its relevance for multiple applications. Pre-signed transactions (PSTs) are currently utilized in numerous off-chain protocols and enable restricted access to funds with delegated custody, which can act as a practical countermeasure for numerous attacks. The author argues that a mechanism to distribute custody of PSTs across multiple entities can provide a defence-in-depth against attacks and enable new trust models for privacy using multi-party computation. The post provides examples of how DDPST can be applied in vault-custody protocols and justice transactions in the current Lightning Network model. In the case of vault-custody protocols, distributing custody of the recovery transaction offers a defence-in-depth against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and delegating custody enables outsourcing of the monitor and response service. Moreover, proactive security models can be instanciated such that successful attacks must occur in a limited time-frame. In the case of justice transactions, distributing custody of the justice transaction among a set of independent watchtowers with an accountability system in-place for their actions can provide a more robust incentive structure and a new privacy mechanism for both operational security of a business and mitigation of targeted attacks such as bribery.The post also invites feedback on the concept and offers to use any application that can benefit from DDPST in the proof of concept code. The post concludes with references for further reading on custody protocols using Bitcoin Vaults, lightning watchtower, private altruist watchtowers, and proactive security.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T23:27:34.253230+00:00