Author: Tom Trevethan 2020-03-31 11:41:46
Published on: 2020-03-31T11:41:46+00:00
Tom Trevethan, a former researcher at nChain, clarified that he left the company over two years ago and was given free rein to work on any ideas he wanted while there. In his time at nChain, he worked on several things, including Bitcoin off-chain scaling, sidechains, pegs, and threshold signatures. Trevethan explained that the patent application in question came out of an idea he had to transfer ownership of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) off-chain, which has some similarities to the statechains proposal. However, he noted that the current ideas are significantly different from those in the application, and the key transfer protocol as described in the application is not secure. Trevethan also mentioned that decrementing timelocks suggested in the application are prior art, and any implementation will most likely use an "invalidation tree" relative locktime backup mechanism for open-ended UTXOs. He concluded by stating that the patent application has not been granted, and the international search report rejected it on the grounds of prior art.David A. Harding, a contributor to Bitcoin Core, asked Trevethan to explain how his proposal to use statechains with 2P-ECDSA relates to his patent assigned to nChain Holdings for "Secure off-chain blockchain transactions." Harding pointed out some excerpts from the application that caught his attention, such as the off-chain transactions enabling one computer system to generate multiple transactions that are recordable to a blockchain in different circumstances, and at least some of the off-chain transactions being valid for recording on the blockchain even in the event of a catastrophic failure of the exchange. However, Trevethan clarified that the patent application was made in May 2017, has not been granted, and the international search report rejected it on the grounds of prior art.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T00:17:46.768930+00:00