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Junha Yang(양준하) edited this page Apr 2, 2023 · 2 revisions

Simperby - A Protocol for Multichain-interoperable Organizations

Simperby is a protocol that allows organizations to establish a secure, trustless, and highly interoperable system capable of finalizing decisions and executing actions on multiple blockchains. This is based on business logic defined and securely synchronized among organization members.

Cryptographic Delivery of Organization Decisions

For an organization that interacts with blockchains (or any trustless system), it is crucial to have a method for making decisions that can be cryptographically verified and executed by the blockchain.

Examples

  1. A single person who owns the private key.
  2. An on-chain voting system deployed on the same chain.
  3. A multisig or MPC wallet operated by a select group of members.
  4. A trusted third party (an oracle or a custody service) that observes the actions and attests to the blockchain.

Examples (cont.)

  1. Not an option; a basic approach.
  2. Easy to implement, affordable, highly multi-chain-interoperable, but not secure and trustless.
  3. Trustless, secure, reliable, but expensive and not multi-chain interoperable.
  4. Good UX, affordable, but requires a trusted third party.

Depending on the type of organization (e.g., corporation, DAO, foundation, etc.) and the business requirements, the decision-making process should be carefully designed.

Limitations of On-chain Governance

  1. Users must pay gas fees to operate the organization.
  2. It depends on the performance, security, reliability, usability, and potential political risks associated with the chosen blockchain.
  3. Its capabilities are heavily constrained by the ecosystem of the chosen blockchain and may not easily interact with other blockchains.

Limitation of Multisig

  1. Not trustless nor decentralized: no guarantee that the key owners accurately represent the off-chain decision.
  2. No programmatic business logic: there is no protocol or system that ensures the behavior of the multisig wallet in the context of a multi-chain environment.

The Simperby Protocol

Simperby is a blockchain engine like Cosmos SDK or Substrate, but it creates a standalone blockchain for a DAO or any organization requiring secure and extensive interoperability within a multi-chain ecosystem.

Features

  • Self-hosted and standalone
  • Trustless
  • Distributed
  • Fault tolerant
  • Lightweight
  • Highly interoperable
  • Native support for multichain treasuries

Consensus and Finalization

Simperby constructs a standalone chain with a consensus mechanism, where the organization functions as a state machine that shares the same state and linear history among its members under the assumption of an adversarial environment.

Statemachine

Having a consensus means that the organization can share a consistent state and its behavior logic (i.e., a state machine). In other words, Simperby can provide a contract system, allowing organizations to program their business logic that can be verified and executed under the protocol. It is important to note that such logic can be defined in a multi-chain manner; for example, it's possible to design a withdrawal policy that tracks daily withdrawals across multiple chains.

Governance

Unlike most of today's DAOs that rely on multisig owners' trustworthiness (e.g., Snapshot), Simperby offers a trustless and decentralized governance system that operates off-chain using a peer-to-peer network and is securely finalized by the consensus once the quorum is reached.

Spoardic Node Operation

Unlike most of today's blockchains, Simperby assumes that organization members are not always online, even though they host the blockchain network. This enables sporadic and lightweight node operation by participants, maintaining the network in a truly decentralized manner with a high level of member involvement.

Multichain Interoperability

The Simperby protocol can trustlessly deliver any messages finalized on the Simperby chain. This means organizations can execute actions on other chains without relying on a trusted third party. Examples include treasury withdrawals, token minting, and interaction with other DApps.

Multichain Interoperability (cont.)

This communication channel can be established using only a smart contract on the target chain. It is cost-effective and easy to implement, utilizing a light client to verify incoming messages. All blockchains with smart contract systems can be integrated with Simperby, requiring minimal effort for light client contract development and deployment.

Storage

As the Simperby protocol creates a standalone blockchain, it has its own storage that is synchronized among organization members. Simperby uses a novel storage model that can be directly presented in the file system. This means that a member can easily browse, upload, and update files just like using OneDrive or Dropbox.

How - Simperby's Key Technologies

  • Simperby's novel consensus algorithm Vetomint, which's based on Tendermint, works even with sporadic participation.
  • Simperby employs a light client to implement trustless message delivery, achieving efficient and instant multi-chain interoperability, sharing the same principle as Cosmos IBC.
  • Simperby constructs a P2P network for governance processes and chat protocols.
  • Simperby utilizes Git as a storage model.

Use Cases - DAOs

  • DAO: as the definition of DAO demands.
  • Web3 infrastructures that require multichain interoperability : Bridges, Oracles, etc.
  • Multi-chain DApp governance: Lido, Stablecoins, etc.

Use Cases - Institutions

  • Centralized organizations (e.g., corporations) requiring external collaboration: consortiums, supply chains, public funding, etc.
  • Centralized organizations seeking programmable policies and additional security beyond plain multisig.
  • Political institutions where adversarial and often-disputed elections are common: parties, international organizations, committees, councils, etc.

Safe & Zodiac

Safe is a de facto standard multisig wallet in the EVM ecosystem, used by many DAOs that don't implement full on-chain governance.

Zodiac is a library providing an interface for accessing the Safe contract with methods other than plain multisig. Examples include: oracle observation, bridged messages, on-chain governance, etc.

Zodiac Integration

Simperby's light client can be integrated with Zodiac as a module that executes Safe actions. This means organizations built with Simperby can securely control Safe contracts while leveraging existing Web UIs and various DApp integrations.

Future works

  1. Zodiac integration mentioned above.
  2. User-friendly UI: this project currently implements core protocols and CLI tools only.
  3. Proof size and verification gas costs are reasonable but can be further reduced using ZKP.
  4. Smart contract systems are not yet supported.
  5. Currently only EVM-based chains are interoperable.