commit ac339329e4099c79304956f07c52623f2fb6655c
parent 5e581c86e128f1c761ccee929aa56d4bb1299925
Author: Jeffrey Burdges <burdges@gnunet.org>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 17:22:57 +0200
Add comments on BOLT
Diffstat:
2 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/paper/taler.bib b/doc/paper/taler.bib
@@ -52,13 +52,22 @@
@misc{BOLT,
- author = {Matthew Green and Ian Miers},
- title = {Bolt: Anonymous Payment Channels for Decentralized Currencies},
- howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2016/701},
- year = {2016},
- note = {\url{http://eprint.iacr.org/2016/701}},
+ author = {Matthew Green and Ian Miers},
+ title = {Bolt: Anonymous Payment Channels for Decentralized Currencies},
+ howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2016/701},
+ year = {2016},
+ note = {\url{http://eprint.iacr.org/2016/701}},
}
+@misc{LightningNetwork,
+ author = {Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja},
+ title = {The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments},
+ month = {January},
+ year = {2016},
+ note = {\url{https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf}},
+}
+
+
@inproceedings{danezis2016rscoin,
author = {George Danezis and
Sarah Meiklejohn},
diff --git a/doc/paper/taler.tex b/doc/paper/taler.tex
@@ -317,6 +317,26 @@ never get cashed out into another currency.
In addition, Zerocash's anonymity for the receiver facilitates illegal
activities like extortion, money laundering, and tax evasion.
+BOLT~\cite{BOLT} is a proposed off-chain payment channel inspired by
+the Lightning Network \cite{LightningNetwork}. In essence, BOLT is
+an e-cash system designed to operate in parallel with Zerocash, along
+with a second similar system. Aside from using Zerocash for resolving
+disputes, and ultimately transferring coins, BOLT sacrifices some of
+the customer anonymity provided by the e-cash primitives so that the
+party acting as the exchange can be an arbitrary miner but cannot
+defraud the customer. BOLT asserts that sacrificing customer anonymity
+in this way is acceptable given Zerocash's strong anonymity properties,
+but the authors do propose using it outside Zerocash.
+
+In general, these off-chain payment channels, like BOLT and the
+Lightning Network, improve the blockchain based payment schemes by
+centralizing payment processing, but they remain orders of magnitude
+more costly than Taler with the same degree of centralization.
+In addition, they require that miners act far more like traditional
+payment processors than conventional cryptocurrencies, exposing miners
+to legal risks. Taler is explicitly designed to help a Taler exchange
+navigate these legal risks.
+
GreenCoinX\footnote{\url{https://www.greencoinx.com/}} is a more
recent AltCoin where the company promises to identify the owner of
each coin via e-mail addresses and phone numbers. While it is unclear
