Drivechain
From the combination of
Hashrate Escrows
A mechanism defined by BIP300 that
allows people to send money to specific sidechain "buckets" on the
mainchain, and then block producers to vote over a long period of 3~6
months to authorize withdrawals back from that bucket. There is also
an alternative, compatible proposal.
and
Blind Merged Mining
A mechanism that allows a sidechain to anchor itself on the Bitcoin chain
(therefore not needing any proof-of-work of its own) while also pushing
the sum of all its block fees into a single Bitcoin transaction that can
be earned by Bitcoin block producers without them even knowing. It can be
implemented using either
this simple method that uses
BIP118 or the more involved
BIP301 method.
Drivechain is born.
Drivechain is the technique for the creation of
decentralized 2-way peg sidechains for Bitcoin. These sidechains can be
used to improve Bitcoin in every front, including
privacy, scalability,
decentralization and
security, and also add many interesting features not
possible before that can make the world better and continue the revolution
started by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Join us!
Things to read or watch
From Paul Sztorc:
From others:
-
Drivechain could ossify Bitcoin's blockchain for good, by Nikita Chashchinskii
-
Why I Invested in Blockstream, 2014 post on why sidechains matter, by Reid Hoffman
-
Drivechain, explanation
and overview, by fiatjaf
-
All About Drivechains, a Van Wirdum Sjorsnado podcast episode with Ruben Somsen
-
Drivechains vs Sidechains, an explanation from Sergio Damien Lerner on how Drivechain is an strict
improvement over SPV sidechains (from the
Blockstream whitepaper).
-
A response to the "miners can steal" critique of Drivechain, by John Light
-
Another response to the "miners can steal" critique of Drivechain, by John Light
-
, a short explanation of the
core of the "Drivechain will replace altcoins" argument, by fiatjaf
How does Drivechain improve...
-
Privacy: by making it quick and cheap to use Zcash, Mimblewimble
and Monero-like sidechains, Bitcoin users have their privacy instantly
improved without the need for costly and cumbersome and barely effective
coinjoin methods.
-
Scalability: Sidechains can scale Bitcoin horizontally. Even
without any new features, just by copying the Bitcoin code multiple
times its scale is multiplied, and without burdening the main chain.
This is sharding done right.
It's also possible to take proven scalability technologies invented
elsewhere (client-side validation, zk-rollups, Lightning-like networks
or a mix of all these) and apply them to Bitcoin directly through
sidechains.
-
Decentralization: By using sidechains for scalability and
features we can keep the Bitcoin chain small and lightweight, and maybe
even reduce its block size. And then users of either combination of
sidechains can choose the sidechain they want to run alongside the very
small Bitcoin mainchain.
-
Security: By turning all block fees from a sidechain into a
single transaction with a ton of fees to the Bitcoin miners, hashrate is
increased, mining is more decentralized the Bitcoin chain is more
secure. It's the solution to the unsolved problem of the shrinking block
reward.
-
Innovation: So far we have only seen innovations in the
blockchain space done by literal scammers. Once there is an environment
in which honest and smart people can operate we will probably be
surprised about the new things that will show up.
Possible Sidechains
A list of some good candidates of things that can be enabled as sidechains
once BIP300 is activated on Bitcoin.
-
Hivemind, decentralized
prediction markets that will revolutionize the emergence and diffusion
of knowledge in society by making cheap talk expensive.
-
Namecoin, or some other form of blockchain for names, so we can
do with ICANN what Bitcoin is doing to Central Banks (an idea of what that could look like).
-
Prime
or
zkCoins, two proposals for highly-scalable money transfer systems, powered by
client-side validation, that only require a blockchain for very
lightweight double-spend prevention, but not for storing any long-term
data or global state.
-
zSide,
Zcash fork that is already running as a sidechain on Drivenet to finally
solve Bitcoin privacy problems. Also comes with decentralized and
user-friendly melt/cast function.
-
RSK, Ethereum-compatible federated
sidechain that already exists but wants to turn itself into a
drivechain. Can be used as the hotbed of new ideas.
-
Monero, some people prefer this one, it has some real-world usage
already and is even displacing Bitcoin in many darknet places.
-
Thunder, a
reasonable proposal for large-block sidechains for scaling.
-
Sia, despite some weird shitcoining
mixed in (that can be discarded), it's a simple design (a blockchain
market for contracts and reputation) that solves a real problem (storing
files) and apparently has proven to work over the years.
Community Opinions
Important people and what they think about Drivechain.
Adam Back |
π© |
"Yes, of course!"
|
Luke Dashjr |
β¬οΈ |
"I'm neutral on drivechain."
|
Mr Hodl |
β¬οΈ |
"I personally don't really care. There are other people who are against
them."
|
Giacomo Zucco |
π© |
"I like Drivechain"
|
Eric Wall |
π© |
"Yeah, I like drivechains better."
|
Robin Linus |
π© |
"I think the exciting thing about Drivechains is bip300, which solves
the 2-way peg."
|
Anton Kumaigorodski |
π© |
"Here's another project which I think is more critical than LN for
bitcoin's long term survival."
|
Jimmy Song |
π© |
"The good news is that Drivechains donβt require (less) trusted
entities and the code is almost done. The bad news is that Drivechains
require a soft fork."
|
Rusty Russell |
π© |
"The nice thing about Drivechains is that they're isolated, right? You
don't have to use it if you don't want to, they exist and it doesn't
damage Bitcoin in any way. So from like a high level I'm broadly
supportive, but, I'm not in the weeds and can't give any like deep
technical critiques."
|
Sergio Demian Lerner |
π© |
"I hope Bitcoin someday soft-forks to add Drivechain"
|
Hasu |
π© |
"Drivechain: good"
|
Hampus |
π© |
"My favorite solution for this is Drivechains BIP300/301 + an
interoperable Lightning Network."
|
calle |
π© |
"I support BIP-300!"
|
Peter Todd |
π₯ |
"Just use an alt currency."
|
John Carvalho |
π₯ |
"Sidechains are inferior to altcoins."
|
Sjors Provoost |
π₯ |
"I'm worried it will bring politics and drama from altcoins to Bitcoin.
This doesn't happen today because since altcoins are viable the drama
people go there and have their drama."
|
Ben, the Carman |
π₯ |
"There's a million other ways to do side chains, I don't see why we
need to soft fork another way in"
|
Torkel Rogstad |
π© |
"We desperately need to take a long and hard look in the mirror, and
start doing things differently. I think starting a more serious and
thorough discussion about BIP300 (Drivechain) is the right place to
start. "
|
Metamick |
π© |
"If you do the research, it makes so much sense to do drivechains."
|
Drivechain Implementation and Testnet
Visit the
Releases page on drivechain.info
or this directory.
There is
a video tutorial for using zSide
and
a Drivenet written tutorial with many screenshots
and
a tutorial specific for adding sidechains.