Virtual Chains and Proof of Burn

Virtual Chains vs L2 Networks

L2 networks

• Lightning Network (Bitcoin payment channels)
• Plasma, Loom Network (Ethereum side chains)

Virtual Chain

• Blockstack

• Fork* Resistant
• Consensus Hash

Stacks Blockchain

High Validation Throughput

one block
one transaction

Low-latency block inclusion

block streaming

Open Leadership Set

proof of burn mining

Participation without mining hardware

negligible extra energy

burn existing cryptos

Fair Mining Pool

aggregation of small burns

no pool operator

hedge bets

Possibility to Migrate

(unchanged)

Proof of Burn

Assumption

• Deep forks exponentially rarer in function of length
• Deep fork unrelated to stacks transactions
• Burn chain miners do not censor all stacks transactions
• 2/3+ stack leaders candidates (by burn weight) are correct and honest

Properties

• Global knowledge of time
• Global knowledge of blocks
• Global knowledge of burns

• Mitigate block-withholding attacks
• Ancillary burns enhance chain quality
• Ancillary burning to hedge bets

Block production

• one burn chain block, at most one stacks block
• not atomic, microblocks (Bitcoin-NG)
• some transactions can be promised