Cross-chain payment protocols with success guarantees

【Author】 van Glabbeek, Rob; Gramoli, Vincent; Tholoniat, Pierre

【Source】DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

【影响因子】1.937

【Abstract】In this paper, we consider the problem of cross-chain payment whereby customers of different escrows-implemented by a bank or a blockchain smart contract-successfully transfer digital assets without trusting each other. Prior to this work, cross-chain payment problems did not require this success, or any form of progress. We introduce a new specification formalism called Asynchronous Networks of Timed Automata to formalise such protocols. We present the first cross-chain payment protocol that ensures termination in a bounded amount of time and works correctly in the presence of clock drift. We then demonstrate that it is impossible to solve this problem without assuming synchrony, in the sense that each message is guaranteed to arrive within a known amount of time. Yet, we solve an eventually terminating weaker variant of this problem, where success is conditional on the patience of the participants, without assuming synchrony, and in the presence of Byzantine failures. We also discuss the relation with the recently defined cross-chain deals.

【Keywords】Distributed systems; Cross-chain payment protocols; Fault tolerance; Blockchain; Asynchronous networks of timed automata; Asynchronous communication; Clock drift; Safety and liveness properties

【发表时间】

【收录时间】2023-05-10

【文献类型】理论模型

【主题类别】

区块链技术-核心技术-跨链与多链