(Bitmain's developers tonight debuted their BCH tokenization proposal-Wormhole in Chinese WeChat groups. This article is only for you to get a quick glimpse of Wormhole. and there might be mistakes in my translation. Anyway, I just want to share the news with the rest of the community. And I expect Bitmain will reveal more info about the new tech feature over the next few days. )

Abstract

Born at the block height of 478,558, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has been dedicated to bringing a reliable electronic cash to the world and fulfilling satoshi’s original vision as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash." It enjoys global seamless circulation, permissionless innovation and other features. How to issue token on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain? Many developers have brought up with ideas such as Colored-Coins. And Andrew Stone proposed to increase OP_GROUP to implement the token scheme as he mentioned in Enable representative tokens via OP_GROUP on Bitcoin Cash . The OP_GROUP solution can only be realized by altering consensus rules of Bitcoin Cash. More specifically, it enables functions similar to that of ERC20 token protocol on the Ethereum network.

Any proposals enabling token issuance that requires certain consensus upgrades will inevitably cause problems, including technical risks, harsh conflicts and huge controversy among community developers. Such controversial proposals often end up into a failure. This could help prevent “radical” initiatives being implemented to ensure the stability and security of the network protocol. At the same time, however, it makes it harder to promote innovation. The controversy that led to the expansion of the independent block of the Bitcoin Cash community, the prolonged and unconstrained generation, is an even more unavoidable evidence of social psychology.

Innovation requires a PERMISSIONLESS community. We have also been exploring ways to implement smart contracts on Bitcoin Cash blockchain without changing the consensus rules. After tremendous research effort, we have paid attention to the OmniLayer protocol, a scheme to realize token issuance through the OP_RETURN opcode. It is the technical basis for daily distribution and circulation of USDT. The Omni Layer runs on top of Bitcoin blockchain. Since the Omni Layer protocol uses the MIT license (open source), we forked the Omni Layer protocol and implemented the tech feature on Bitcoin Cash blockchain to achieve token issuance. We named this technical solution Wormhole protocol , and the original token in the protocol is named Wormhole Cash.

Term

• OP_RETURN : One of the opcodes in Bitcoin Cash. Any transaction outputs containing it is Unspendable , and nodes can safely move it out of the UTXO collection without affecting the total volume of the UTXO collection. After the protocol upgrade in May 2018, BCH increased its default data-carrier-size to 220 bytes.

• Wormhole protocol : It is based on the Omni Layer protocol that make protocol specs for smart contracts on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain possible.

• Wormhole Cash: The base currency used in the Wormhole protocol, or "WHC" in short.

Theory

Based on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, Wormhole Cash adds new features like token issuance, transferring and burning into the BCH blockchain without changing the current BCH consensus rules. .

The metadata of a transaction is written in OP_RETURN. Issuance, transferring and burning of Wormhole protocol-based tokens can only be completed through Bitcoin Cash transaction, and through recoganizing (reading) data stored in OP_RETURN.

The Wormhole protocol multiplexes Bitcoin Cash's transaction transfer system to read transactions, addresses, and OP_RETURN data on Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

The Wormhole protocol is a superset of the Bitcoin Cash network consensus(note: this sentence is 100% literal translation.) The metadata it identifies is only the OP_RETURN data in the consensus protocol of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, and consensus rules of Bitcoin Cash do not need to understand data in OP_RETURN.

Implementation

Wormhole protocol is implemented by integrating into Bitcoind. But the consensus rules of Bitcoin Cash themself do not need to be changed. Bitcoind clients that integrates the Wormhole protocol are called Wormhole clients. Nodes running the Wormhole client will be able to recognize the OP_RETURNWormhole protocol.

Security and Consensus Rules

Wormhole Cash represents a two-layer security approach.

The first layer is Bitcoin Cash's transaction security. Bitcoin Cash adopts POW algorithm as a decentralized timestamp server. The algorithm has been working stably for nearly 10 years. Here are some of the benefits of the UTXO model:

• UTXO requires no balance maintenance

• UTXO serves as an independent data logger that can speed up transaction verification.

• UTXO model only “cares” locking scripts and unlocking scripts.

• UTXO has high performance when processing transactions.

Wormhole protocol multiplexes the entire UTXO security model of BCH and its decentralized timestamp server model.

The second layer of security is that nodes running the Wormhole protocol will not analyze data that does not conform to the Wormhole protocol. Each node has the ability to reanalyze transaction data and calculate the most “recent legal final state” of Wormhole Cash.