Research Owner: @Marcin Pawlowski

HEAVY WORK IN PROGRESS — SUBJECT TO MAJOR AND RAPID CHANGES

Motivation

This document describes the reasoning behind the design of the staking layer for the mix network in the context of the Crypsinous. It should guide towards a high level design of the solution. However, it is not expected to be at the level of specification which can be directly implemented.

Staking Abstraction

Without going into details let us assume that we have an access to staking functions. For simplicity we define the following abstract functions:

• Stake: enables a node to register a new Public Coin with some known value, associated with a known public key and some additional public information.
• Delegate: enables a node to associate additional public value (delegated stake) to a known Public Coin.
• Undelegate: enables a node to disassociate the delegated stake from a Public Coin.
• Reward: enables a node to consume a reward linked with the Public Coin.
• Slash: enables a node to execute a slashing logic on a Public Coin that misbehaved.
• Unstake: enables a node to burn the Public Coin and retrieve the stake and a reward.

We are assuming that all of the staking operations can be done without creating additional linkage to any other previous operations.

Mixnet

Brief Definition

Mixnet is a network of nodes that is constructed of mixing nodes. The role of a mixing node is to shuffle and delay messages it receives. This provides network wide sender and receiver unlinkability. The mixnet network can be enhanced with cover traffic that improves the network statistical unobservability.