Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Formal specification of Miniscript in Alloy

From: Dmitry Petukhov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 12:15:55 +0100

I have created a formal specification of Miniscript [1] using
the specification language of Alloy analyzer [2]

Link: https://github.com/dgpv/miniscript-alloy-spec

Possible uses for the spec:

- Implementing Miniscript libraries, as additional reference that might
  be easier to navigate than prose spec

- Generating test cases for implementations, although currently this
  will be a manual process due to the tools limitation (can be overcome
  with GUI automation)

- Checking the implementation against the spec, by writing a program
  that would generate Alloy .als files from the data structures of the
  implementation, and then checking these files in Alloy

- Extending or amending Miniscript, if the need arise. Having
  extenstions and changes checked (with bounds) against a spec should
  help catch inconsistencies

- Exploring the properties of Miniscript

If you have an interest in Miniscript, please consider looking at the
spec and share your ideas.

The spec may contain mistakes, as it was not yet checked against any
implementation, it was only checked for consistency using its own
predicates, with the scope of up to 8 nodes.

If you notice a mistake or inconsistency, please submit an issue on
github (or communicate this in other ways)

[1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/miniscript/
[2] https://alloytools.org/