[ZcF-general] March & April Update: implementing anonymous payment channels

J. Ayo Akinyele ayo at boltlabs.io
Fri Apr 26 16:24:02 EDT 2019


Progress as of April 26, 2019

We submitted an initial zip proposal for adding BOLT support
<https://github.com/boltlabs-inc/zips/blob/master/zip-bolt-support.rst> to
Zcash ZIP process at the end of March. The proposal describes the features
we need for building channels using shielded addresses (and transparent for
backward compatibility with Bitcoin). Our goal within the next few weeks is
to complete the initial proposal with more details regarding the use of
shielded addresses only as we work towards NU3 deployment.

Therefore, the current reference implementation for testnet uses shielded
inputs with multi-sig T-addr for funding the channel. Adding an OP_BOLT
opcode to our Zcash fork for checking the correctness of channel opening
and closing (but evaluating how much we can do off-chain and if we can rely
only on standard signatures for on-chain transactions). We are also
revising the abstract protocol and how its instantiated on a currency to
simplify potential deployment.

Lastly, still working on a bare-bones reference implementation in Python
for creating and managing payment channels on top of Zcash. It is currently
in a private repo that will be made public once v1 is complete (hopefully,
soon) and it builds on a Python/C FFI libolt
<https://github.com/boltlabs-inc/libbolt> interface and riemann
<https://github.com/summa-tx/riemann> package (many thanks to James
Prestwich). Rust or Go Bolt implementation will follow.

Please reach out at info at boltlabs.io if there are any questions.

Thanks,
Ayo


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