Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2017/694

Atomically Trading with Roger: Gambling on the success of a hardfork

Patrick McCorry and Ethan Heilman and Andrew Miller

Abstract: We present atomic trade protocols for Bitcoin and Ethereum that can bind two parties to swap coins in the event that two blockchains emerge from a single “pre-fork” blockchain. This work is motivated by a bet between two members of the Bitcoin community, Loaded and Roger Ver, to trade 60,000 bitcoins in the event that Bitcoin Unlimited’s planned hardfork occurs and the blockchain splits into two distinct forks. Additionally we study several ways to provide replay protection in the event of hardfork alongside a novel mechanism called migration inputs. We provide a detailed survey and history of previous softforks and hardforks in Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Category / Keywords: atomic trade bitcoin ethereum hard fork oracle gamble roger ver loaded public pledge

Date: received 12 Jul 2017

Contact author: stonecoldpat at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20170721:150914 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2017/694

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