BSafe.network Layer 2 Technology Competition

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Call for proposal and rules of competition

December 8, 2017, BSafe.network (Revision April 21, 2018)

1. Background of BSafe.network affiliated competition series and reasons for holding layer 2 competition

Nowadays, many cryptocurrency projects and blockchain based projects are becoming reality, and there are a large number of technologies and implementations. The development of theory and technology to make blockchains mature enough for actual applications is important if we are to provide a foundation for building upon, much like what happened with the Internet itself. Scaling Bitcoin and other academic conferences are the places to find the future progress of blockchain technology. In addition to such conferences, we need a place to provide scientific evidence to evaluate and compare blockchain technologies. This evidence is not limited to performance, but also security, privacy, game theory, economics, and regulation. BSafe.network is the neutral academic research test network by international universities with 24 universities currently participating. BSafe.network plans to hold a series of open technology competitions on many aspects of blockchain technologies. The aims of the open competition are:

  • facilitating development and progress of theory,
  • conducting technology verification over BSafe.network,
  • providing review by university researchers/professors,
  • providing the source of scientific/academic results, and
  • publishing technically reviewed software.

Currently, “layer 2 technology for blockchain” is a category of technology to enhance blockchain based transactions by connecting the decentralized nature of blockchain and actual applications by segregating a huge number of transactions. There are also other types of layer 2 technology to enhance privacy. Lightning network and TumbleBit are examples of Layer 2 technologies. Because layer 2 protocols provide different trust models than blockchains, there may be trade-offs among performance, security, privacy and so on. This competition aims to have deep and scientific knowledge of designing and evaluating layer 2 technology to facilitate further research and development of layer 2 technology.

2. Goals

The goals of this competition are

  • Collecting attack models on layer 2 networks,
  • building measurement of security and performance of layer 2 technology. and
  • better understanding the trade-offs of using layer 2 technology.

This competition does not aim to select some technologies as standards or candidates of standards. It aims to provide public academia backed data and research results. Outcomes to the public are as follows.

  • Program codes: cc-by license
    • Layer 2 attack/evaluation software codes
    • Evaluation software codes/platform
  • Evaluation data for each proposal
  • Common evaluation dataset

As byproducts of this competition, we can provide public security testing theory and tools for Layer 2 technologies.

3. Category of the competition

At the first competition, we conduct the competition for evaluation technology.

We call for technology evaluation methodology and software for layer 2 technology. They include common datasets for evaluation. Please refer to section 4 for evaluation criteria to be considered.

4. Evaluation method

In this competition, we evaluate each proposal in two ways; theoretical evaluation and experimental evaluation. Theoretical evaluation is reviewing submitted technical documents by university researchers through a scientific review process. Experimental evaluation is performing experiments for each submission using BSafe.network isolated research test network by installing submitted software and running each blockchain network for three months, with evaluation datasets. Experiments include not only performance evaluation but also security evaluation and attacks performed by university researchers.

5. Evaluation metrics

Supposed evaluation metrics include but not limited to

1) Performance

a) Number of transactions/sec

b) Network latency

2)Security/Trust

a) Resistance to fault/crash/attack to nodes

b) Degree of decentralization

c) Resistance to DoS attack to make layer 2 transactions fail

d) Scenario and data set to evaluate

e) Availability of layer 2 nodes

3)Privacy/Fungibility

a) Correlation among transactions

b) Unlinkability among transactions

c) Unlinkability to identity

6. Schedule

  • Call for submission start: December 8, 2017
  • Submission deadline: March 31, 2018
  • Submission of expression of interest: 23:59 UTC April 6
  • Full submission deadline: 23:59 UTC May 18
  • Full submission deadline: 23:59 UTC May 25
  • Evaluation and experimentation start: May 21, 2018
  • Disclosure of a list of proposals: May 30, 2018
  • Evaluation and experimentation end: July 31, 2018
  • Announcement of a winner and excellent proposals: August, 2018
  • Technical presentation and awarding ceremony: September, 2018
  • Evaluation and experimentation end: tbd
  • Announcement of a winner and excellent proposals: tbd
  • Technical presentation and awarding ceremony: tbd

7. Submission procedure

Anyone can submit a proposal to this competition, but need to meet the following procedure and submission requirements. Each submitter must submit the following.

  • Cover sheet
    • Name of submitter(s) with the corresponding submitter
    • Email address
    • Name of technology
  • Technical documents
    • Design rationale
    • Algorithm specification and supporting documents
    • Self-evaluation documents in security and efficiency
    • Intellectual property disclosure
  • Software code
    • Any programming language is acceptable
    • Installation documentation is needed.
    • Providing installation package is recommended.

A sample of application document.

All submitters need to carefully submit the program code to avoid security vulnerabilities and bugs. Before running software over BSafe.network, we will conduct the security analysis and source code check. If we found any major problem in the code, the proposal is not considered for the competition. If the evaluating committee judges that the technical documents do not contain enough information and data for theoretical evaluation, the proposal is not considered for the competition. Note that no code changes are allowed after submission.

8. B-Prize

We are planning to award a winner and excellent proposals “B-Prize” with certain amount of money. Details will be announced when it is decided.

9. Note on business neutrality

The layer 2 technology competition focuses on providing technical knowledge to help further research and development. The result does not endorse anything about other aspects including soundness of business, exchange rates of cryptocurrencies and tokens. To preserve business neutrality, we do not evaluate any proposal with existing/upcoming plans of ICO or selling tokens.

10. Evaluating committee (alphabetical order)

  • Chen Feng, University of British Columbia
  • Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro, Telecom Sud Paris
  • Ethan Heilman, Boston University
  • Jordi Herrera Joancomartí, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • Jameson Lopp, BitGo
  • Jeremy Rubin, Bitcoin Core Contributor
  • Rusty Russell, Blockstream
  • Shigeya Suzuki, Keio University

Other committee members will be added after confirmation.

11. Contact and submission

E-mail: layer2.competition@bsafe.network

Website: http://bsafe.network

Revision history

  • December 8, 2017: Initial version
  • January 31, 2018: Add note on business neutrality
  • March 20, 2018: Add evaluating committee member
  • March 29, 2018: Add process of expression of proposal
  • April 21, 2018: Focus to evaluation and extension of full proposal
  • May 17, 2018: Submission deadline extention and set strict deadline
  • May 22, 2019: Re-evaluation of schedule

About BSafe.network

BSafe.network is an international and neutral research test network for blockchain technology. It plays a similar role as what NSFNET and BSD did for the development of the internet technology, for blockchain technology. The network consists of international universities to preserve neutrality, and as of December 8, 24 universities from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa are a part of BSafe.network.