Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] How to do Proof of Micro-Burn?

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 19:13:41 -0400

On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 12:23:40AM +0200, Ruben Somsen via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> The goal is to burn multiple amounts (10, 20, 30, 40) in a single OP_RETURN
> (100) and specifically indicating how much of the total is intended for
> what use case. A merkle sum tree achieves this.
> 
> (1a)  100      (1b)  ABCD       (2a)  100     (2b)  ABCD
>     /    \          /    \          /    \         /    \
>   30      70      AB      CD      30      70     AB      CD
>  /  \    /  \    /  \    /  \    /  \           /  \
> 10  20  30  40   A  B    C  D   10  20          A  B

From a practical point of view, note that the merkle-sum-tree is only useful in
cases where you're burning significantly less than a transaction fee. For the
forseeable future, that's <~$50, probably less.

Trusting a well-known third-party with $50 really isn't a big problem. So I
think adding more clever cryptography to avoid trusting the third party to
complete the burn isn't really necessary.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org