What is COMIT?
Who is in the audience?
- Basic understanding of blockchain
- Interested in technology
- Not necessarily developers
- Attention span for ~20 minutes
Who is up here?
Thomas
- Research engineer
- Originally from Austria
- Working for CoBloX
- Interests in
- decentralized systems
- software design
CoBloX
- TenX research lab
- Developing the COMIT protocol
- Based in Sydney
- Constantly hiring
What I will talk about
- Outline the problem
- Talk about solutions
- Explain how COMIT is different
The Blockchain ecosystem
Terminology
Blockchains are ledgers that track ownership of assets
Books that record who was how much money
Different blockchains
- bitcoin: very secure, high value
- ethereum: faster blocks, easier smart contracts
- monero: privacy focused, no smart contracts (yet)
- ...
Each blockchain is a closed system
Bitcoin & Ethereum
- Different address formats
- Different currencies
Australia & Austria
- Different (postal) address formats
- Different currencies
- Different languages
How can we bridge that?
How can we exchange ownership of assets on different blockchains?
A naive approach
Meet Alice & Bob
- Fictional characters used in Computer Science
- Represent two parties
Alice and Bob want to trade
- Alice has Bitcoin
- Bob has Ether
We assume Alice and Bob are honest
- Alice gives her Bitcoin to Bob
- Bob gives his Ether to Alice
Why is this naive?
Cryptocurrencies are about NOT having to trust anyone.
Neither a bank, nor the person you are sending the money to.
What is the alternative?
Research.
Hint: That is what we (and many others) are working on.
One problem,
many solutions
1. Create new blockchain / tokenization
- Blockchains are isolated systems
- Create a new system that spawns across all others
- Have to trust new blockchain
- Only as strong as your weakest link
- This is what most people do
2. Do Atomic Swaps
- Do special transactions
- Both parties escrow their assets
- Difficult to make happen instantly
Digital world
- Be in control of the asset until you get the other one
- Cash <=> bike
- Secure
Physical world
- crypto: digital cash
- No trusted 3rd party
- Don't trust, verify! => open-source
Atomic swaps
So what is COMIT?
COMIT helps users to execute cryptographic protocols
Please clarify?
- Trade: Alice and Bob want to execute a cryptographic protocol
- Present them with choices
- COMIT is a platform => built for other developers
We are pretty proud of that!
The field is changing fast.
Cryptographic protocols will stay.
Where are we?
- Open-source repository: github.com/comit-network
- Initial prototype: comit-rs (Implementation in Rust)
- Initial draft of protocol specifications (RFCs)
Questions?
What is COMIT?
By Thomas Eizinger
