Smartlink Update: Web3 Escrow, Secret Milestones and CEA Partnership
Ever since we embarked on a journey to build trust across Web3, the Escrow smart contract module has been a critical aspect of our research and development. Smartlink is now a full-fledged development hub with over 35 people working on the project! We’re really excited to share our advancements today.
We imagined a world where individuals and businesses can transact safely with their funds minus the constraints and exorbitant fees of unfamous legacy platforms. The main differences between Smartlink and current payment solutions are not only technological but, to a large extent, structural.
Smartlink is on the way to making tremendous progress in developing a model of its own that will pioneer a new type of payment processing.
Our team is working hard to tackle feasibility and security challenges on different levels. Additionally, our Escrow Smart Contract modules will be rolling out sequentially i.e each time a new feature is fully ready and audited.
Some of the modules are in their final integration phase, while others need more time to be fully functional in the real world.
We explain this in more detail below!
Smartlink partners up with the CEA Research Center to build its non-custodial Escrow protocol
Our team is proud to be working with the CEA, ranked by Reuters as The World’s Most Innovative Research Institution. The CEA has worked with some of the most prominent companies such as Alstom, Vinci technologies, Engie, and more recently Tezos’ Tenderbake.
Each escrow mechanism we are developing has its own degree of complexity. The CEA and Smartlink have been working together to identify the ideal framework for the Smartlink escrow module to function with digital and physical products — the latter being more challenging.
With that being said, we split the scope into two categories i.e Digital and Physical assets. Both categories have their own set of functions and utilities.
Smartlink Escrow V 1— Digital Products
Escrow First Implementation: Smartlink Locker — Token Vesting
Rolling out the escrow module is one of the key milestones of our roadmap and to indicate our confidence in what we’re building, we’ll use it to create the token vesting schedule for our advisors, backers, and some of the new team members. The fee to use this feature will be charged in SMAK (% TBA).
This vesting contract is scalable. Users can enter an unlimited number of beneficiaries with each having different amounts of tokens. Any project will be able to use it to vest FA tokens and create transparency with their community, advisors, investors, etc.
Escrow Second Implementation: Digital products
The first phase of the Smartlink Escrow smart contract module comprises an escrow service for a range of digital products, which means you’ll be able to escrow Tezos tokens, NFTs, Synthetic assets and make OTC trades in One-on-One transactions.
Conditional settings, however, will go live in later releases. As mentioned earlier, our work with the CEA is gradual and will help to ensure we choose the best possible model for each escrow module.
To get a better idea of how our escrow feature will work with digital products, here is the updated transaction workflow.
Expected launch: Q1 2022
Smartlink Escrow V 1 — “Physical” Products
Developing the escrow module for digital products is no easy task. The good thing though, is we have control over various aspects of development as well as execution with limited dependence on third parties.
However, integrating physical products into the Smartlink escrow module comes with a new array of challenges, including a lack of technological infrastructure from outside parties, information relaying mechanisms, and identity verification challenges.
Here is a graphic representation of how our escrow module will combine on-chain and off-chain processes to create an end-to-end tracking, verification mechanism for the escrow smart contract to work.
There are some precursors to achieve this process flow including decentralized oracle networks and hybrid smart contracts.
Decentralized Oracle Networks (DONs)
Decentralized oracle networks play a critical role in any blockchain-based application; they relay real-time, time-sensitive off-chain data from external sources to the blockchain-based app.
A DON consists of:
a network of executables (akin to the reporters in Harbinger) which relay off-chain data to the blockchain, and may maintain an underlying ledger using Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) technology, but
needs not to be a stand-alone system since whose sole objective is to support the blockchain.
DONs can be hierarchical with incentivized participants (staking/slashing) in order to avoid bribing and ensure crypto-economic security. In a nutshell, a DON extends a blockchain by layering heterogenous consensus technology on top of it in order to bring it closer to a set of off-chain services.
Integrating DONs with our framework modifies the process flow as indicated below
Smartlink plans to use Chainlink 2.0 for its escrow module.
Coming to the BFT technology we intend to deploy for DONs, our team is exploring the use of the Federated Byzantine Agreement Systems (FBAS) as the BFT technology underlying the DON that integrates the off-chain entities in Smartlink’s use case for physical assets.
In an FBAS, each participant independently chooses whom to trust, which induces a quorum system built in a bottom-up fashion that is organically led by market forces, akin to the routing tables of IP routers.
FBAS enjoy the following key properties:
Decentralized control, since anybody can join by picking its choice of trust.
Low latency, since agreement can be reached by each participant exchanging information only with its vicinity.
Flexible trust, since participants have the freedom to choose who they see fit.
We are going to utilize hybrid smart contracts to integrate on-chain and off-chain elements.
Hybrid smart contracts combine blockchains (BC), which provide availability and safety, with Trustworthy Execution Environments (TEE), which provide confidentiality and performance.
Our escrow module for physical products relies on efficient data-sharing mechanisms from third parties (transit partners, couriers, fiat payment gateways), and considering the external limitations, our team needs to build multiple components from scratch.
We’ll release a timeline for our escrow module for physical products as we move further in the development process.
Partnerships
Smartlink is now entering a phase where partnerships are important and will be essential to test out our different product iterations. Since our project involves a fair chunk of research and development we plan to work alongside shipping companies, marketplaces, e-commerce sites, and various blockchain projects.
We will announce some of our first partners soon.
Whitepaper V2 on the way
We’ve been working on our Whitepaper V2 and it will be released in early 2022. This new paper will gather updated research, new technical models, technology choices, detailed vision, new data, and Smartlink DeFi updates.
We’ll outline Smartlink’s goals and how we position the project in the current market.
There is a lot to it and we’re excited for this new version. Stay tuned!
Secret Milestones
We didn’t forget about our Secret Milestones :)
We can’t cover everything in this article, we will be updating the roadmap on the website very soon!
To conclude on an exciting note:
Announcements are coming your way anytime now.
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Sources and Credits:
Lorenz Breidenbach, Christian Cachin, Alex Coventry, Steve Ellis, Ari Juels, Andrew Miller, Brendan Magauran, Sergey Nazarov, Alexandru Topliceanu, Fan Zhang, Benedict Chan, Farinaz Koushanfar, Daniel Moroz, and Florian Tramèr. Chainlink 2.0: Next steps in the evolution of decentralized oracle networks, 2021. https://research.chain.link/whitepaper-v2.pdf.
David Mazières. The Stellar consensus protocol: a federated model for internet-level consensus, 2015. https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf.
