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A Two-phase Protocol for Atomic Multi-chain Transactions

Published: 09 December 2024 Publication History

Abstract

A blockchain enables secure, atomic transactions among untrusted parties. Atomicity is not guaranteed, however, for transactions whose operations span several blockchains; multi-chain atomicity must be enforced by a protocol. Such protocols are known only for special cases, such as cryptocurrency swaps, which are limited only to two chains. We propose a novel two-phase protocol that facilitates atomic executions of general multi-chain (>= 2) transactions. We formally analyze the protocol correctness and show that the proposed abstraction considerably simplifies the development of multi-chain applications. Our experiments with a prototype implementation show that the performance of the general atomicity protocol is comparable to that of custom-built implementations.

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cover image ACM Conferences
DIN '24: Proceedings of the ACM Conext-2024 Workshop on the Decentralization of the Internet
December 2024
41 pages
ISBN:9798400712524
DOI:10.1145/3694809
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Publication History

Published: 09 December 2024

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Author Tags

  1. atomicity
  2. cross-chain interoperability
  3. formal analysis
  4. protocol

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