In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost were once again joined by Ruben Somsen. This time, they discussed one of Ruben’s own proposals, called “softchains.”
Softchains are a type of two-way peg sidechain that utilizes a new type of consensus mechanism: proof-of-work fraud proofs (or, as Provoost prefers to call them, “proof-of-work fraud indicators”). Using this consensus mechanism, users don’t validate the content of each block, but instead only check the proof-of-work header, like simplified payment verification (SPV) clients do. By using proof-of-work fraud proofs, users do validate the entire content of blocks any time a blockchain fork occurs. This offers a security model in between full node security and SPV security.
See Also
Somsen explained that by using proof-of-work fraud proofs for sidechains to create softchains, Bitcoin full nodes could validate entire sidechains at minimal cost. This new model might be useful for certain types of sidechains, most notably “block size increase” sidechains that do nothing fancy but do offer more transaction capacity. Van Wirdum, Provoost and Somsen also discussed some of the downsides of the softchain model.
In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. The trio discussed Drivechain, a sidechain project spearheaded by Paul Sztorc.
Sidechains are alternative blockchains, on which coins are pegged to bitcoin. This should make the sidechain coins interchangeable with bitcoin and therefore carry an equal value. In a way, sidechains let users “move” bitcoin across blockchains, where they are subject to different protocol rules, allowing for greater transaction capacity, more privacy and other benefits.
Van Wirdum, Provoost and Somsen explained that Drivechain consists of two main innovations. The first is blind-merged mining, which lets bitcoin miners secure Drivechain with their existing hash power, but without necessarily needing to validate everything that happens on the sidechain. The second is hash rate escrows, which lets miners “move” coins from the Bitcoin blockchain to the sidechain and back.
See Also
The hosts also discussed some of the benefits as well as the complications with Drivechain, most notably the security implications of letting miners control the pegging-out process. They considered the arguments as to why this process is incentive compatible (in other words: secure) — or why it might not be.
