Scaling & Anonymizing Bitcoin at Layer 1 with Client-side Validation

• "In the paper, we propose a way to upgrade Bitcoin layer 1 (blockchain/timechain) without a required softfork."
• "The upgrade leverages properties of client-side validation, can be gradual, has a permissionless deployment option (i.e. not requiring majority support or miner cooperation) and will have the scalability of the order O(log⁡N) (no zk-proofs) or O(1) (with zk proofs), where N is a global number of transactions."
• "It also offers higher privacy (absence of publicly available ledger, transaction graphs, addresses, keys, signatures) and bounded Turing-complete programmability with a rich state provided by RGB or another client-side-validated smart contract system."
• "In the current proposal we demonstrate that Bitcoin, if provided with a stateful client-side-validated layer (like RGB), can be upgraded to a system without the limiting properties of public ledger (blockchain), and, while preserving PoW consensus protocol, it can be re-based onto a new scalable non-blockchain layer 1 (codenamed Prime)."
• "This layer will be able to host a theoretically indefinite number of transactions (at least billions per minute) since the storage of state, computing and validation will be moved to the client-side-validated layer above."

"Client-side-validation upgrades are fundamentally different to blockchain hardforks and softforks, and require the introduction of new concepts and terms."

• "As a side benefit, this approach allows the gradual introduction of new features, instructions etc, not achievable in the blockchain world: issuers of the new contracts do not depend on the previous protocol versions and can propose more advanced solutions without any additional upgrade risk or community coordination."

Full Proposal