jagdeep sidhu@realSidhuJag
I built and designed @syscoin to thrive in the good times and survive in the bad:
1. It started with merged mining (AuxPoW) over 10 years ago! This allows you to “borrow” security (not “transfer”) from participating @Bitcoin miners.
2. Simple assets as UTXO representations(coloured coins) were developed, which are efficient and allow us to connect UTXO asset world to VMs like our EVM. At the same time we added Sentry Nodes that finalize the chain and allow us to “transfer” auxpow security due to allowing chain locks to prevent selfish mining (falling back to longest chain rule if chainlock doesn’t form).
3. Introduced NEVM (Network enhanced Virtual Machine), this runs a full EVM node and processes blocks 1:1 between UTXO and EVM state.
4. Kept layer 1 slow methodically arriving to conclusion that layer 1 should be settlement not retail processing. We enabled Data Availability as a quantum secure hash based variant that helps scale rollups off of NEVM. It was called Proof of Data Availability (PoDA), or Bitcoin DA.
5. Chain locks were enhanced to multi-quorum chain locks. This doubles down on our modular thesis because it takes 3x longer to form a chain lock but still happens in seconds. 3 out of 4 quorums need to arrive to consensus on the state of the chain before finalizing. Again backed by PoW when consensus isn’t achieved by Sentry Nodes. Security = super majority SN + majority AuxPoW.
6. Added @RolluxL2 as an optimistic showcase to the modular layer as a stopgap towards full ZK.
7. Just recently released the zkSYS zk stack framework on testnet (based on @zksync guts but with our DA and settlement layer customizations). This will allow real-time interoperability amongst chains settling on top of gateways which scaling independently, amortizing the settlement layer constant cost, ZK proving and DA of the layer 1 across each user transaction.
8. Now we are about to migrate testnet to our Airbender prover and RISC V zk proving with EVM emulation at 22mhz speeds. Yes this is close to real-time proving of blocks with very low cost hardware to support economy of scale throughout.
9. We maintain focus on AuxPoW tags and zk based bridging between Bitcoin and Syscoin, along with “based” bridging from NEVM to other EVMs as a slow/steady/secure interop layer across chains.
All of these were stepping stones to something greater, a holistic package that stays resilient and robust during good and bad times, when technology throws curve balls we try to adapt and thrive. I think the team did a very good job at ensuring we focused on long-term objectives and we are now close to completing the vision. We didn’t have to invent every piece of the puzzle but we found and adapted the right ones and it all fits together elegantly.
Given the above design, not only is it a cohesive plan that may adapt well to the PQ environment(slow blocks=good) it also helps us survive reorg challenges with respect to PoW (which is one of the few drawbacks of PoW, see @litecoin recently). We think the combination of a pseudo PoS of multi-quorum chain locks along with AuxPow creates a better cohesive mechanism design that may offer security that rivals or competes with any other design, while offering superior permissionlessness of PoW.
We are always open to work with others to improve the status quo, as technical thought-leaders in the space. We provided our thoughts in the form of code to our community. Coding was hard, but it is easy compared to trying to navigate uncertainty around exponential technological growth, and this is where I believe @syscoin will continue to shine the most.
