Actuarial System To Reduce Interactivity In N-of-N (N > 2) Multiparticipant Offchain Mechanisms

The email starts with the sender addressing Antoine, Zman, and the list. The sender mentions that the whole line of thinking is interesting but their initial question was about who the penalty of the actuary goes to. The sender then points out that they were able to address this issue in PathCoin [1]. They found a way to avoid the linear dependence of total fidelity bond on the number of participants, but it comes with severe restrictions. The sender explains that they achieved this by using CTV/covenant and fixing the order of transfer. Each participant needs to lock up a certain amount of sats (satoshi) when spending a coin of 10k sats. The mechanism used is similar to a series of airlocks, where each scriptPubKey contains conditions for spending the coin. The sender further explains how the locks and transfers work in the mechanism.

The sender acknowledges that in a more flexible design, this approach may not be as interesting, but it could provide a clue for finding a direction forward. They tried to explore ideas related to reusing pathcoin fidelity bonds/penalty bonds across different pathcoins in parallel or in series, but encountered the same problems mentioned in the context, such as double spend and collusion problems. Only the fixed-path approach described above seems to be stable. The sender also mentions that they have a suspicion that APO (Adaptor Signature Outpoints) can be a big part of any solution to this problem, although they haven't thought about it in a while.

In conclusion, the sender shares their thoughts and findings regarding the penalty of the actuary and the linear dependence of total fidelity bond on the number of participants. They explain the method used in PathCoin to avoid this linear dependence but note the severe restrictions involved. The sender also suggests that this approach may provide a clue for finding a direction forward and mentions the challenges faced when exploring other ideas related to reusing pathcoin fidelity bonds. They express their suspicion that APO could be a significant factor in solving this problem.