State Channels on Ethereum
Details
In this session Liam Horne (L4/Counterfactual) will provide an introduction to generalized state channels and its practical applications. This is a good opportunity to learn about this exciting technology from one of its creators, and get some guidance on implementing State Channels in your project. We will also have an interesting presentation on PISA: Arbitration Outsourcing for State Channels, and a presentation by Vincent Cloutier on the Maker project.
Agenda:
- Introduction (Ethan)
- Maker DAO (Vincent C.)
- State Channels: introduction, applications, and Q&A.
- PISA
- Networking
Many thanks to our Sponsors: Real Ventures and L4, and special thanks to Blockhouse for hosting this event.
What are Generalized State Channels?
Generalized state channels move all of the on-chain stateful components for blockchain applications off-chain. Rather than require each application developer to build an entire state channel architecture from scratch, a generalized state channel generalized framework is one where state is deposited once and then be used by any application or set of applications afterwards.
State channels themselves are an important technique for reducing fees for blockchain users. Within their scope of applicability, they allow users to transact with each other without paying blockchain transaction fees and with instant finality, and are the only technique that securely realises the latter property. We describe generalized state channels, a construction that allows users to install new functionality in an existing channel without touching the blockchain, using counterfactual instantiation of contracts within a channel. We present an object-oriented approach built on top of ethereum that encapsulates functionality and state in counterfactually instantiated contracts, providing numerous privacy, efficiency and security benefits over a monolithic approach, and describe a new object-oriented metachannel approach to building state channel networks. We analyze the unique security assumptions of channels and describe third-party services that channel users can benefit from using.