Abstract
Covenants are Bitcoin Script programs that restrict how funds are allowed to be spent. In previous work [9], Möser et al. implemented covenants with a new Script operation that allows one to programmatically query the transaction. In this paper, we show that covenants can be implemented with a new CHECKSIGFROMSTACK operation that verifies a signature for a message passed as an argument. When the same public key and signature is used together with CHECKSIG, one can recover transaction data, which then allows one to enforce a covenant. To illustrate our technique, we reimplement Möser et al.’s vault construction for securing funds against key compromise. We use Elements Alpha, a sidechain whose Script language has the needed operations.
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© 2017 International Financial Cryptography Association
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O’Connor, R., Piekarska, M. (2017). Enhancing Bitcoin Transactions with Covenants. In: Brenner, M., et al. Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10323. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70278-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70278-0_12
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