SovCoin is a proof-of-concept sovereign zk-rollup built on top of Bitcoin.
A sovereign rollup is a blockchain that publishes its transactions to another blockchain, typically for ordering, data availability and consensus, but it handles its own settlement. This is the major point that differentiates it from a regular rollup, the DA layer doesn't verify that sovereign rollup TXs are correct. Nodes verifying the sovereign rollup are responsible for verifying that new transactions are correct (https://celestia.org/learn/sovereign-rollups/an-introduction/#what-is-a-sovereign-rollup)
If the nodes verify a transaction that was published to the DA layer and it's invalid, they will reject and ignore it. Now, the sovereign rollup is responsible for determining its correct chain, not the DA layer.
As this project is part of the grant program of Starkware, the rollup will be very similar to Starknet.
- Usage of starknet_stack: this implies a decentralized sequencer and centralized prover
- Usage of ordinals to store the state transitions / validity proofs / transaction data on the Data Availability Layer, Bitcoin
- A trusted bridge to transfer funds L1 <> L2
- Smart contract account logic
- Full nodes verify blocks created by the Sequencer.
Having a functioning sovereign rollup on top of Bitcoin, able to process transactions and supporting smart contracts written in Turing-complete language, Cairo.
- In case the Prover emits an invalid transaction picked up by a Node, the verifiers will be able to vote to close the bridge, forcing the sequencer to revert the invalid transaction.
- If the recursive covenants are added to Bitcoin, make the bridge trustless.