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Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 8 from 3 users
Topic OP
Armadillo in RSK: placing merge-mining security on par with Bitcoin mining
by
Sergio_Demian_Lerner
on 01/08/2019, 22:00:01 UTC
⭐ Merited by DarkStar_ (4) ,ETFbitcoin (3) ,malevolent (1)
Recently RSK (the first merge-mined Bitcoin sidechain) hard-forked to add a feature to increase the security of merge-mining. The new security protection, called Armadillo, is quite simple to understand.

The idea is to add to the RSK merge-mining tags additional information that enable the reconstruction of the RSK fork graph even if the actual RSK blocks are hidden from the RSK network.

Then, any node can monitor the Bitcoin blockchain and, in case of detecting a malicious hidden fork, emit alerts that flood the RSK network. These alerts are decentralized and Sybil-attack protected. Nodes can choose to enter a temporary "Safe Safe Mode" (to differentiate it from Bitcoin's old Safe Mode Smiley). In this mode they do not confirm transactions, so high-stake economic nodes, such as Exchanges, won't accept deposits.

I wrote an article about how it works and the security it brings here:

https://bitslog.com/2019/08/01/armadillo-more-consensus-security-for-rsk/

Happy to receive feedback and hear other ideas.