Protocol

The MainStay protocol employs the underlying concept of a staychain of linked transactions within the Bitcoin blockchain, where all transactions in the staychain conform to having only a a single output, preventing branching and any possibility of alternate staychain histories. By anchoring the staychain base transaction ID into the genesis block of the sidechain, and then committing the state of the sidechain at regular intervals into the staychain, it becomes impossible to roll back or re-write the state of the sidechain without also rolling back the staychain, which is effectively impossible due to the might of Bitcoin’s global proof- of-work. Sidechain nodes can validate these commitments and the resulting immutability of the staychain via a connection to a Bitcoin full node. When a sidechain block has been committed to a Bitcoin staychain, this block has been reinforced and is as immutable as a Bitcoin block of the same depth.

To minimise the encumbrance of the mainstay on the Bitcoin blockchain, and to prevent any potential miner censorship of transactions containing OP_RETURN outputs, a homomorphic commitment scheme based on the ‘pay-to-contract’ (BIP175) protocol is employed. In this approach, commitments from the sidechain are embedded in a single transaction output address, and the staychain is indistinguishable from normal Bitcoin payment transactions. The scheme has been designed so that it is compatible with both multisig (P2SH) and single public key (P2PKH) addresses via BIP32 derivation paths.

The aim of the MainStay protocol is to restrict a sequence of periodic commitments from an external system (referred to here as the sidechain without loss of generality) to an un-forkable staychain of transactions in Bitcoin, and to uniquely bind this staychain to the sidechain by commiting the transaction identifier directly the sidechain genesis block. We define a staychain as a sequence of linked transactions where each one has only a single output - transactions can have more than one input (fan-in), but maintaining single outputs means only one sequence of commitments is possible from a given initial transaction. Each unique transaction output then represents a single use seal.

If the security proposition of a sidechain depends on the Mainstay proof-of-immutability then the mechanism of propagating the staychain must be robust and reliable: if the staychain fails to propagate or is corrupted (e.g. having multiple outputs) then new sidechain state changes (i.e. blocks) will lose the guarantee of immutability - however it will always remain fail secure (i.e. previously reinforced transactions are provably unique without trust).

Single-key protocol

In the following general description of the protocol, we assume a single Mainstay key and signing entity. The protocol is also presented in relation to Bitcoin as the proof-of-work mainchain, but it is in principle compatible with any PoW blockchain.

Staychain

A schematic of a fan-in-only chain of linked transactions - a staychain. By enforcing single outputs only one possible sequence of transactions is possible.

Initialisation

The initial step in the protocol is the creation of the base transaction TxID[0], which is performed before the initialisation of the sidechain.

  1. The signing entity generates a BIP32 extended master private key xpriv , and corresponding extended master public key xpub. The extended public key is then used to create the base address: Addr[0] with a derivation path of m/0.
  2. The signing entity then creates a transaction (the base transaction BaseTx) paying an amount of BTC (to cover at least initial transaction fees) to the base address Addr[0] as a single P2PKH output.
  3. This transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network: once it is confirmed in the Bitcoin blockchain it acquires a globally unique transaction ID that is a pointer to the start of the staychain: TxID[0].
  4. The sidechain is then configured and linked to the Bitcoin staychain. The pointer TxID[0] is embedded directly in the genesis block of the sidechain as metadata in a defined location, along with the xpub.

Commitments

The frequency of state commitments is determined by the signing entity : the sidechain may generate blocks more frequently but can only attest once per Bitcoin block (average every 10 minutes). The process of attestation will occur as follows:

  1. At each interval j, the signing entity will retrieve the sidechain best block hash blockhash[j]
  2. The 32 byte blockhash[j] is then split into 16 2-byte parts, which are then converted into an array of 16 integers bhint[16].
  3. A BIP32 derivation path (the commitment path path[j]) is formed from this integer array sequence, and prepended with m/0.
  4. The commitment address Addr[j] is then derived from the xpub with path[j].

For example:

blockhash_j = 310057788c6073640dc222466d003411cd5c1cc0bf2803fc6ebbfae03ceb4451

path_j = m/0/12544/22392/35936/29540/3522/8774/27904/13329/52572/7360/48936/1020/28347/64224/15595/17489

5. The signing entity then creates a Bitcoin transaction with one input spending the single output of transaction TxID[j-1] (initially the base transaction when j = 1) and paying to a single P2PKH output with address Addr[j] 6. The transaction is then signed using the private key derived from xpriv with path[j-1] 7. The valid transaction is then broadcast to the Bitcoin network. Once it is confirmed in a block, it is referenced by transaction ID: TxID[j]

Mainstay protocol

Schematic of the mainstay protocol. Dashed lines represent commitments.

Verification

A block generated on a sidechain that has a mainstay commitment is known as reinforced and has the same immutability guarantees as a confirmed Bitcoin block. For any client or user to confirm the status of a sidechain block only requires connections to both Bitcoin and sidechain full nodes. No additional information, beyond what is included in the sidechain and Bitcoin blockchains, is required to validate direct mainstay reinforcements.

This confirmation functions as follows:

  1. The base transaction ID TxID[0] is retrieved from the sidechain genesis block along with the master xpub.
  2. TxID[0] is retrieved from the Bitcoin blockchain.
  3. The staychain is tracked until the unspent tip TxID[t], confirming each component transaction consists of only a single output:
TxID[0] → TxID[1] → TxID[2] → TxID[3] → ... → TxID[t]
  1. The single output P2PKH address of TxID[t] is retrieved: Addr[t].
  2. Starting at the tip (most recent confirmed block) of the sidechain (block w) with block hash blockhash[w], the corresponding BIP32 path is determined: path[w].
  3. Addr[w] is derived from path[w] and the master xpub.
  4. If Addr[w] equals Addr[t] block w on the sidechain (and all below it) are confirmed as reinforced.
  5. If not true, the sidechain block height is decremented: w ← w − 1 and the check repeated.

The above protocol would only need to be followed for the initial sync of a mainstay connected node: once the staychain tip transaction TxID[t] has been identified, additional attestations can be confirmed by monitoring when TxID[t] is removed from the Bitcoin UTXO set. The new staychain tip TxID[t+1] will then be included in the most recent Bitcoin block.

Staychain feed in

To maintain the persistent operation of a staychain, it must be continually funded to pay for mainchain (Bitcoin) mining fees. The staychain can always be funded with a substantial amount of Bitcoin at the beginning (i.e. at the base transaction stage) however it may be required to ‘top-up’ the funding at a later stage. This is possible without breaking the immutability of the staychain: the only required condition for immutability is that there is always only one output of any transaction in the chain - and that the staychain cannot bifurcate. Inputs however can be added by anyone: additional funding can be added with SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY inputs. The base transaction will always define the commitment sequence through to the tip.

Federated protocol

An important property of the Mainstay protocol is that it does not require trust in any party, including the entity holding the staychain base private key (xpriv) to confirm that a given sidechain state is immutable. However trust is required in this entity to ensure that the mainstay is persistent, and that the system continues to operate (i.e. commitments continue to be generated). If the key was stolen then an attacker could steal the Bitcoin in the staychain tip output and prevent further confirmations. To remedy this, the sidechain would need to be hard-forked to reset the mainstay (i.e. to commit a new base transaction into the sidechain).

Sidechains can be operated using a federated consensus protocol, where a fixed federation of separate entities are required to cooperate to generate a new block to add to the blockchain. This is typically implemented with m distinct entities, where a threshold of n are required to add their signature to generate a new valid block. This has the advantage of being very scalable and efficient, and also retains some level of decentralisation, not requiring trust in any single entity. In the case of a federated sidechain employing Mainstay to Bitcoin, the operation of Mainstay can achieve the same security properties and guarantees as the federated block signing protocol. In this case, the staychain would be controlled with an n of m multisignature script: n signers are required to cooperate to operate the Mainstay. m − n keys can be lost or compromised and the Mainstay will still function. This requires some modifications to the protocol described above, as follows.

Initialisation

  1. Each signing node i where i = 1, ..., m generates a master extended private key xpriv[i] and corresponding extened public xpub[i].
  2. The signing nodes then cooperate to create an n of m multisig redeem script (where m is the total number of signing nodes and n is the number of signatures required) containing m base public keys derived from each xpub[i] via a path m/0.
  3. The redeem script is then hashed to create a P2SH address Addr[0].
  4. A transaction is then created with Addr[0] as a single P2SH output and funded with with sufficient BTC for initial fees and then broadcast to the Bitcoin network.
  5. Once confirmed, it is now publicly verifiable that the redeem script hash corresponds to the published n , m and all the xpub[i].
  6. The TxID of the transaction TxID[0] is retrieved and committed into the genesis block of the sidechain along with each xpub[i].

Commitments

  1. At each attestation interval j, each of the mainstay signing nodes i will independently retrieve the sidechain tip block hash blockhash[j][i].
  2. Each node splits the 32 byte blockhash[j][i] is then split into 16 2-byte parts, which are then converted into an array of 16 integers bhint[16].
  3. A BIP32 derivation path (the commitment path path[j][i]) is formed from this integer array sequence, and prepended with m/0.
  4. For each node i, The commitment public key pubkey[j][i] is then derived from the xpub[i] with path[j][i].
  5. n of m signing nodes then combine pubkey[j][i] to derive a redeem script and corresponding P2SH address Addr[j].
  6. A transaction spending the single output of TxID[j−1] and paying to Addr[j] is created.
  7. n of m signing nodes then verify that Addr[0] corresponds to the correctly derived base keys.
  8. The transaction is then signed by each of n (any subset of m) signing nodes in turn using the derived private key xpriv[i] with path[j-1][i].
  9. The transaction is then broadcast to the Bitcoin network, validated and then mined into a block, generating TxID[j].

Note

Bitcoin multisig redeem scripts are structured as follows: OP_n pubkey[1] pubkey[2] ... pubkey[m] OP_m OP_CHECKMULTISIG

Verification

  1. The base transaction ID TxID[0] is retrieved from the sidechain genesis block along with the n master xpub[i]
  2. TxID[0] is retrieved from the Bitcoin blockchain.
  3. The staychain is tracked until the unspent tip TxID[t], confirming each component transaction consists of only a single output:
TxID[0] → TxID[1] → TxID[2] → TxID[3] → ... → TxID[t]
  1. The single output P2SH address of TxID[t] is retrieved: Addr[t].
  2. Starting at the tip (most recent confirmed block) of the sidechain (block w) with block hash blockhash[w], the corresponding BIP32 path is determined: path[w].
  3. Addr[w] is derived from path[w] and m of the master xpub[i]
  4. If Addr[w] equals Addr[t] block w on the sidechain (and all below it) are confirmed as reinforced.
  5. If not true, the sidechain block height is decremented: w ← w − 1 and the check repeated.