Relinking 21 Million Bitcoin: Forging a New Consensus Together

Summary

The loss of user asset control and limited application scenarios are major obstacles for $BTC’s integration into practical use cases. Relinx proposes a new Bitcoin self-custody model that ensures $BTC remains under user control while enabling effective operation of applications on Relinx’s consensus layer. By locking $BTC in their own wallets, users can earn rewards. Developers can incorporate the SDK into their applications to run decentralized apps on Bitcoin. Relinx offers a high-TPS decentralized consensus that supports on-chain smart contracts and integrates traditional programming with off-chain services.

Let’s Relink Millions of Bitcoin: Forging a New Consensus Together.

We will:

• Create a new way to earn
• Strengthen Bitcoin’s Ecosystem
• Co-build consensus for ourselves

Talking Data

The Native Nature of $BTC

Data shows that current mainnet Bitcoin ecosystem projects fail to gain the trust of $BTC holders, despite endorsements from capital and exchanges. Here are some telling figures:

• 98% of $BTC remains on the Bitcoin network
• $WBTC accounts for only 0.8% of total BTC circulation, and $BTCB accounts for just 0.3%
• One week after the launch of the Merlin mainnet, $BTC saw a 40% outflow

From this data, further analysis reveals that even with strong backing, these projects still fail to gain $BTC trust:

• Despite using Ethereum, which has high consensus and support from various DApps and ecosystems, $WBTC only accounts for 0.8% of total $BTC circulation after years of operation
• $BTCB, endorsed by the world’s largest exchange, Binance, has an even lower circulation than $WBTC, showing that resource backing alone cannot secure $BTC trust

Clearly, solutions requiring users to relinquish control of their assets (such as cross-chain or asset mapping) cannot leverage the vast value of $BTC. The Bitcoin ecosystem needs safer, more native, and more trustworthy solutions.

Requirements for Diverse Applications of $BTC

Current blockchain projects have limited capacity to accommodate the full value of $BTC.

• Transaction throughput: $BTC has a 24-hour trading volume of $23B, but its TPS is only 7. It is evident that both $BTC and other assets on the Bitcoin network rely more on off-chain or alternative trading methods.
• Security: The Bitcoin network has been operational for 15 years and has proven to be reliable. It is challenging for holders of $BTC to trust other chains in the short term, so applications must be native to Bitcoin and provide security guarantees.
• Scalability: The market value of $BTC = $1.35T, while the total market value of Staking + DeFi = $187.9B + $44B = $231.9B. The market value of $BTC is 5.8 times that of Staking + DeFi. Applications like Staking and DeFi cannot accommodate the vast value of $BTC, leading to the emergence of more diverse application scenarios.

The above data indicates that Bitcoin has low performance but is highly secure, and $BTC holds immense value. Applications capable of achieving real-time, native, and scalable integration of on-chain and off-chain diversity may unlock $1.3T in value.

Relinx’s Exploration

Many Bitcoin projects have been exploring and advancing in both native and diverse aspects, with emerging projects showing even more significant progress. Relinx has created the Self-custody consensus (SCC), which rebuilds the consensus layer on Bitcoin, enabling $BTC to earn rewards by being locked in their own wallets and supporting various decentralized applications that were previously impossible to implement.

For $BTC Holders

For most $BTC holders, Relinx offers a way to earn incentives directly in their own Bitcoin wallets. No cross-chain, no asset mapping, not even transfer transactions are involved. In this process, Relinx utilizes the HTLC of the Lightning Network, adding a hash time lock to the wallet. This essentially binds the asset for a certain period, during which neither the user nor anyone else (without the UTXO private key) can transfer it. These locked assets provide decentralized network, asset assurance, and security for applications on the universal consensus layer. Therefore, users who lock their assets receive corresponding rewards. This solution is more native and secure than traditional Bitcoin projects, as it is built directly on Bitcoin without cross-chain or asset mapping, and no transfers are involved. With just three steps, users can securely earn rewards in their Bitcoin wallets:

• Hold $BTC in wallet
• Run a Relinx node and add a time lock to the wallet
• Select supported applications and wait for distributed earnings

For Developers

Relinx has created a real-time decentralized consensus that boasts exceptionally high TPS, enabling both on-chain and off-chain applications. The universal consensus layer of Relinx is essentially an MPC network. This structure ensures nearly the same TPS as centralized servers, facilitating on-chain smart contracts and integration with traditional programming and services. Moreover, since only the final settlement transactions are broadcasted on Bitcoin, with the intermediate process handled by the MPC network using Accountable Custody Commitments, this guarantees highly efficient transaction processing, capable of achieving near real-time transactions. This process is similar to the Lightning Network, where the intermediate state is handled by the Lightning Network and not broadcasted to the blockchain, only being broadcasted to Bitcoin when both parties settle.

By embedding Relinx’s SDK into their applications, developers can develop decentralized applications. Every transaction running on the Relinx universal consensus layer is backed by locked assets, verified by N self-custody service votes, and the final settlement transactions are confirmed by Bitcoin. For example, oracles are no longer limited by Chainlink contracts, and liquidation is no longer subject to significant losses due to the slippage or depth of DEX or Marketplace.

In this mode, developers only need to focus on their business logic, while the universal consensus layer handles everything else, including Bitcoin’s nativeness, asset assurance, security, and more.

Relinx has made preliminary progress in the control of assets and the diversity of applications. More scenarios will be verified in Testnet.

Application of New Technologies

To achieve breakthroughs in native functionality and application diversity, innovative technologies must be adopted. Thanks to the rapid development of cryptography, Relinx can apply the latest technologies to project practice. Taproot, Multi-party computation (MPC), Accountable Trustless Custody, high-throughput channels, Accountable Custody Commitments, and Dynamic Custody Allocation Protocol form the technological foundation of Relinx. Here, we delve into the most fundamental aspects.

What is Self-custody consensus

Self-custody consensus construct base on Trustless Self-custody using cryptographic technologies like Taproot, MPC, and Accountable Self-Custody, and Accountable Custody Commitments and Universal Consensus Layer.

The goal of Self-custody Consensus is to realize a completely new Bitcoin custody model in which control over assets never leaves the user, but the user also cannot unilaterally terminate custody. This ensures that users providing Bitcoin for custody and those needing custody of Bitcoin do not need to trust each other or any third party.

Technically, it is achieved by a taproot output with two script-paths, as shown in the figure below. One of the script-paths is a Multi-Sig Lock which is a 2/2 multi-signature, composed of the user’s public key and the MPC’s public key, and both parties must sign before it can be used. Neither party can use the output alone, thus fully ensuring the user’s control. The other is the Fallback Timelock, controlled solely by the user’s public key. After a certain period, the user can use it with a single signature, serving as the final security guarantee in the event of network failure.

What is Accountable Trustless Custody

After the implementation of trustless self-custody, we need to consider building security guarantees for the demand side on this basis, that is, to increase the ability to prevent evil and resist attacks without losing the security of trustless self-custody. This can be achieved by combining accountable assertions and trustless self-custody over taproot, which we call Accountable Self-Custody.

The cryptographic technology of accountable assertions retains the possibility of being held accountable for malicious actions (such as double-spending or double-voting, etc.) when the user performs various operations, which is implemented based on chameleon hash functions [3]. Specifically, let’s construct a tree space with a height of l and an outdegree of n and a key pair of chameleon hash function (cpk,csk), then select a random number k, use the pseudorandom function Fk to construct the root node and calculate its hash value z, then the public key is (cpk,z). Then use csk to generate a series of node values and random number sequences from leaf to root for the data that needs to be signed, and this output is the assertion t. The verification process is to parse the assertion t and reconstruct the nodes, calculate the hash value of the root node and verify whether it is consistent with z. A more important feature of this algorithm is that it can extract the key csk when signing more than once. The specific method is when there are two different assertions (t0, t1) found with the same public key, people can calculate these two assertion paths like the verification process, until finding a position in the tree, the two assertion paths form a collision in the chameleon hash function, then use the extraction algorithm of chameleon hash to output the secret key ask=csk.

We believe these technologies together can greatly enhance the efficiency, security, and versatility of blockchain networks. Collectively, these advancements leverage cutting-edge technology to address the challenges of modern blockchain networks, paving the way for a more secure, efficient, and democratic blockchain network.

Why It Holds Promise

Relinx has overcome two obstacles hindering the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem: security and application diversity. Together, we are relinking millions of bitcoins, forging a new consensus. Under this consensus, a variety of more practical applications will emerge, elevating the value of the Bitcoin ecosystem to new heights. With Relinx’s self-custody approach, we are all co-builders, freely joining and taking responsibility for ourselves, trusting in code and cryptography, and not relying on any institutions or individuals. This is the consensus we believe in, and this is the security we trust.