bitcoin-dev
Smart Contracts Unchained
Posted on: April 5, 2019 17:46 UTC
In this message exchange between Aymeric and ZmnSCPxj, they discuss the issue of smart contract platforms disappearing and how participants can recover funds.
ZmnSCPxj suggests that if all participants agree on a fair distribution of funds, they can exit the platform even after it disappears by signing with their participant keys and taking the first branch of the script. They also discuss how the proposal induces a centralized system and how most existing sidechains are centralized except for lightning. ZmnSCPxj clarifies that he wouldn't lump Lightning together with sidechains, as it moves things closer to true offchain techniques. Aymeric suggests that sidechains could use a decentralized system to store intermediate states and be a distributed escrow. However, ZmnSCPxj notes that perhaps this could be a next step. The discussion ends with both parties agreeing that the issue of platforms going down needs to be addressed.