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Unilateral Exit

Unilateral Exit

Original Postby stevenroose

Posted on: March 11, 2024 22:42 UTC

The discussion revolves around the limitations and potential solutions concerning the use of Merkle Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST) in scenarios involving numerous participants.

It's highlighted that MAST becomes impractical for handling exit orders in large group settings due to its requirement for pre-calculating all possible exit sequences, a process that grows factorially with the number of participants. This limitation restricts its application without specialized hardware to groups of no more than 10 to 15 participants.

The conversation shifts towards exploring alternatives that can accommodate larger sizes, as exemplified by the Ark project. The suggestion put forth involves incorporating an actual accumulator within the opcode to manage the calculation of remainders dynamically, rather than relying on pre-calculated values. A proposed solution includes the development of an append-only Merkle forest that could function within a fraud-proof, interactive framework. This approach would allow each exit to be processed by taking a leaf index as input, subsequently appending an "exit leaf" to the accumulator, thereby updating the tree structure to reflect the exit.

In case of malicious activity, the system provides mechanisms for dispute through proof of one of three conditions: the inaccuracy of the claimed leaf index for the exit, the prior completion of the exit indicated by the presence of an exit leaf, or the inconsistency between the new accumulator and the expected result of adding the exit leaf to the original one. The implementation of such a system is deemed feasible using either MATT or CATT technologies, indicating a move towards more scalable and secure methods for managing participant exits in large-scale applications.