The Bitcoin community’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism may turn into a helpful technique of securing quite a lot of proof-of-stake (PoS) sensible contract blockchain protocols, because of efforts from a Stanford College professor.
David Tse and his analysis crew are driving the usage of the preeminent cryptocurrency to offer added safety to PoS networks. Tse’s proprietary Babylon blockchain goals to make use of Bitcoin (BTC) to bolster community safety and incentivize BTC holders to take part in what’s ostensibly a brand new strategy permitting the staking of Bitcoin on proof-of-stake chains.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Tse outlined how Babylon makes use of the Bitcoin scripting language to attach a PoS-based slashing mechanism to the Bitcoin community. This permits for the creation of sensible contracts that may set particular spending situations:
“Though the Bitcoin scripting language is restricted in its capability to specific complicated spending situations, we’ve used superior cryptography to translate the slashing situations of a PoS chain right into a spendable transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Tse stated that Babylon’s BTC staking protocol permits BTC to safe its community with out altering or forking the Bitcoin blockchain. This additionally permits BTC holders to earn rewards for contributing to the safety of PoS networks by staking their BTC.
“Our methodology primarily transforms the slashing situation of a proof-of-stake chain right into a spendable Bitcoin transaction. This fashion, the staked BTC doesn’t should be bridged to the PoS chain in any respect.”
The Stanford professor added that the simplicity of the strategy additionally maximizes the safety of blockchains by avoiding potential vulnerabilities related to cross-chain bridges. As Cointelegraph extensively reported, cross-chain hacks and exploits have been rife, resulting in over $2 billion in crypto being stolen up to now yr.
Bitcoin stays unmatched as the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and continues to function on the unique specs set out by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Nonetheless, the ecosystem has seen renewed curiosity and progress with the inception of Bitcoin Ordinals, which permit customers to inscribe nonfungible tokens onto particular person satoshis, the smallest denomination of a unit of BTC.
Equally, Tse believes that protocols like Babylon develop the utility of Bitcoin past being a easy retailer of worth or medium of alternate by sharing Bitcoin’s sturdy safety with different chains and functions:
“We goal to scale Bitcoin’s safety in a method just like Ethereum’s scaling efforts, successfully sharing Bitcoin’s sturdy safety with the remainder of the decentralized world.”
The broader cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to develop novel approaches to blockchain consensus. Proof-of-stake chains have benefitted and are shortly adopting new approaches like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs). StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson, who pioneered the know-how, additionally believes that ZK-proofs may enormously profit the proof-of-work-based Bitcoin blockchain.
Journal: Right here’s how Ethereum’s ZK-rollups can turn into interoperable
