Off-chain smart contracts

[nicola]

I define Off-chain contracts as contracts whose code is not run by all the miners and state transition is proved by consensus, in this way we can (1) run computation with a lot of data cheaply (2) run computation with high computational time without clogging the network (3) write code that is not bound to a cryptocurrency incentive structure.

Smart contracts that run on data and operations that are timestamped on an auditable and authenticated log (or merkle DAG). How can we prove the consistency of a state transition?

(Background: #14, #4, Shea's simple contracts)

General

• Building applications on top of logs: distributed system where components talk via a shared log instead of message passing

Incentive-based

• Versum
• Rational Proofs Incentive-based verifiable delegated computation #27
• TrueBit (same as versum)
  • Versum quorum (the idea is to timestamp the result of a computation, versum provers sign the checkpoint and put some money at stake, new provers can come along and re-prove & confirm, if they reject the timestamp and the user agrees, initial set of provers gets penalized)
• Ethereum

Computational Sound proofs (Verifiable computation)

• Adsnark/Snarks/Garbled Circuits/Homomorphism (see Understanding Secure (multi-party) computation #14 )

Authenticated Data Structures

• IPLD Transformations and Authenticated Pipelines #4
• Verena
• IntegriDB
• Blockstack
  • Catch up with @jcnelson on the conversation on ADS/Versum based contracts

State Channels

• Ask @T909 about how computation can be offload via state channels

[nicola]

Adding Rational proofs (#27) in this ^