Welcome to the resource topic for 2024/1995
Title:
BitVM: Quasi-Turing Complete Computation on Bitcoin
Authors: Lukas Aumayr, Zeta Avarikioti, Robin Linus, Matteo Maffei, Andrea Pelosi, Christos Stefo, Alexei Zamyatin
Abstract:A long-standing question in the blockchain community is which class of computations are efficiently expressible in cryptocurrencies with limited scripting languages, such as Bitcoin Script. Such languages expose a reduced trusted computing base, thereby being less prone to hacks and vulnerabilities, but have long been believed to support only limited classes of payments.
In this work, we confute this long-standing belief by showing for the first time that arbitrary computations can be encoded in today’s Bitcoin Script, without introducing any language modification or additional security assumptions, such as trusted hardware, trusted parties, or committees with secure majority. In particular, we present \mathsf{BitVM}, a two-party protocol realizing a generic virtual machine by a combination of cryptographic and incentive mechanisms. We conduct a formal analysis of \mathsf{BitVM}, characterizing its functionality, system assumptions, and security properties. We further demonstrate the practicality of our approach: in the optimistic case (i.e., in the absence of disputes between parties), our protocol requires just three on-chain transactions, whereas in the pessimistic case, the number of transactions grows logarithmically with the size of the virtual machine. This work not only solves a long-standing theoretical problem, but it also promises a strong practical impact, enabling the development of complex applications in Bitcoin.
ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1995
See all topics related to this paper.
Feel free to post resources that are related to this paper below.
Example resources include: implementations, explanation materials, talks, slides, links to previous discussions on other websites.
For more information, see the rules for Resource Topics .