isabella232 / peace-relay

PeaceRelay: Connecting the Ethereum blockchains

Peace Relay

Here are some links you might want to check out first:

1. BTCRelay
2. Formal introduction of Peace Relay

What is PeaceRelay?

Peace Relay is a system of smart contracts that aim to allow for cross-EVM-chain communication using relay contracts.

These contracts will be able to verifiy merkle-patricia proofs about state, transactions, or receipts within specific blocks.

This, along with the wonderful Ethash verification work done by SmartPool, allows for trustless cross chain transfers of all tokens on any EVM chain. This implementation uses the merkle-patricia proofs implemented by Zac Mitton.

How It Works

• Important Notes:

  • In order to do cross-chain verification, we need valid block header informations stored in PeaceRelay contracts so that other proofs (Eg. transaction proof, account state proof) can be verified based on merkle roots in the block header. In this rudimentary version of Peace Relay, we assume the block header submitted is the correct header from the counter chain. In the future, these headers will be verified based on PoW within and chain re-organization will be taken care of.
  • In the demo, when user in one chain (say ETH) wants to transfer his funds to another chain (say ETC). He will lock his ethers in ETH and gets some tokens on ETC in return. He then can use these tokens for his business on ETC chain. If someone wish to trade ethers between chains, they can use Peace Relay the way others use BTC Relay - by verifying a transaction and its value.

• Step by step:

  Let us assume that the user would like to transfer funds from ETH to ETC. We shall use the Kovan testnet to represent ETH and Rinkeby testnet to represent ETC. In other words, we will be locking / unlocking ETH in Kovan and obtain ETH tokens (minting / burning) in Rinkeby.

  • PeaceRelay contracts deployed on Kovan and Rinkeby (1 each)
  • ETHLocking contract deployed on Kovan
  • ETHToken contract deployed on Rinkeby

  ETH to ETH tokens on ETC / Kovan to Rinkeby

  1. Send the desired ETH to be converted to the ETHLocking contract on Kovan using the ETHLocking.lock() function.
     • Note that there is no way this function will abort(throw) unless it runs out of gas during execution.
  2. Wait for Kovan block which contains the transaction to be relayed to Rinkeby. In the meantime, generate the proof of the transaction off-chain.
  3. Send transaction to execute ETHToken.mint() function using the generated proof in the previous step. This will mint ETH tokens.
     • The user can then spend those tokens at will until one day where they wish to convert them back to ethers in ETH / Kovan

  ETH tokens on ETC back to ETH / Rinkeby back to Kovan

  1. Send tokens to be burnt using the ETHToken.burn() function.
  2. Wait for Rinkeby block containing the transaction to be relayed to Kovan. In the meantime, generate the proof of the transaction off-chain.
     • The proof here contains the transaction and corresponding transaction receipt
  3. Send transaction to execute ETHLocking.unlock() function with the proof generated in the previous step to unlock ethers.

Setup

Pre-requisites

There are 2 wallets needed: 1 that does the submitting of block headers, and another that will submit mint / unlock transactions for the smart contracts.

Contract deployment

The contracts' codes can be found in the ./contracts folder.

1. Deploy a PeaceRelay contract on Rinkeby. This contract relays block headers from Kovan.
2. Deploy another PeaceRelay contract on Kovan. This contract relays block headers from Rinkeby.
3. Deploy a ETHToken contract on Rinkeby, which takes in the Rinkeby PeaceRelay contract address (Step 1) as a constructor argument.
4. Deploy a ETHLocking contract on Kovan, which has the Kovan PeaceRelay (Step 2) and Rinkeby ETHToken contract (Step 3) addresses as its constructor arguments.

Setting up the relayers

We used AWS to do the relaying of block headers. All necessary files can be found in the ./cli folder. Create a linux server (you may run locally as well) and upload those files onto the server.

1. Edit the settings.json file. Input the different contract addresses and private keys of the 2 wallets that does the block header submissions and transaction submissions.
2. Run the command node peacerelay.js --from={srcChain} --to={destChain} --start={blockNum} where

• srcChain is the chain from which the block headers are to be relayed (smallcaps)
• destChain is the chain to which the block headers are to be relayed (smallcaps)
• blockNum is the starting block number to be relayed
• Eg. node peacerelay.js --from=kovan --to=rinkeby --start=6919465 (Relays Kovan block headers to the Rinkeby PeaceRelay contract, starting from block 6919465)
• Eg. node peacerelay.js --from=rinkeby --to=kovan --start=2136659 (Relays Rinkeby block headers to the Kovan PeaceRelay contract, starting from block 2136659)

Setting up the website

0. It is assumed that the contracts have been deployed and relayers have been set up.
1. Run truffle deploy to compile contracts. You should now have a build folder. The json files will be needed for the front-end website. (Namely, the ABI of the contracts)
2. Ensure that the settings.json file has the correct information as mentioned in step 2 of the 'setting up the relayers' section.
3. Run npm install to install dependencies.
4. Run npm run dev or yarn && yarn start.
5. Website should be available via localhost:3000