The Road to Mesh Security
This article discusses the design and rationale behind Mesh Security, one of the latest projects in the Cosmos ecosystem.
What is Mesh Security?
The idea and name behind Mesh Security comes from the image of a chainmail, in which the strength of the mail, or maille, results from the combined strength of all of the individual metal rings linked together in a mesh.
That is, the idea that there´s strength in collaboration and in shared, interlinked security.
Though the technical details can be daunting, the idea itself is very simple.
What is Confio’s contribution to building Mesh Security?
Smart Contracts are a powerful and convenient programming paradigm for blockchains. Provided with custom extensions and “entry points” to and from blockchain code, they can be used to dramatically augment the functionality of a blockchain, at the same time keeping the implementation modular, well-defined, easily maintainable, upgradable, and secure.
It was a natural choice to implement Mesh Security using smart contracts. For Cosmos-based blockchains that support smart contracts using CosmWasm, like Osmosis, Juno, and others, Mesh Security through smart contracts, plus a Mesh Security SDK for ease of integration, would be a relatively easy technology to integrate, deploy, and maintain.
The same paradigm can then be extended to other Cosmos-based blockchains. Or even non-Cosmos-based blockchains. The smart contracts provide a clean and reusable implementation of the core business logic, and an SDK can be used to adapt/integrate with the different blockchains.
An MVP has already been implemented, and we´re now working on V1, which will include the slashing of cross-delegators associated with a validator, as well as a working Price Oracle. After that, V2 is in planning, and that will be the first production-ready version.
Confio will be working to deliver the core Mesh Security implementation, coordinating with other orgs in the Cosmos space to have a successful product launch in the near future.
Why is it important?
Mesh Security, along with Interchain Security (ICS), is probably the next big thing in Cosmos-based blockchains. Since the advent of IBC, it was only a matter of time, and only natural, that IBC would be used to provide inter-blockchain security for IBC-supporting chains.
Mesh Security is one realization of that idea. There are others, like Interchain Security, and we´ll discuss the similarities and differences with ICS later.
Besides, nothing in principle prevents the concept of Mesh Security and a realization of its idea of interoperability to be applied beyond Cosmos-based blockchains. As long as there’s an interchain communication mechanism or bridge between two blockchains, Mesh Security could, in principle, be implemented on top of it.
What’s the benefit?
The benefits are multiple. On one side, we consider that shared security (and there are different models and schemas in which a shared security model could be implemented) is a good thing in and of itself.
Then, the idea of reusability of funds that are just “sitting there” in Proof of Stake (PoS) based blockchains is very attractive. Mesh Security would allow a delegator on a PoS blockchain to simultaneously cross-delegate to other PoS blockchains. That means that the same funds (provided some guarantees for slashing and misbehavior handling) can be reutilized across multiple blockchains and accrue block rewards through them.
In that regard, Mesh Security is a natural extension of the PoS concept itself. Given that the funds are there, why not use them by multiplying and staking them across different blockchains? Mesh Security is the way, or one way, in which that can be achieved seamlessly, safely, and robustly.
How does Mesh Security differ from the shared security model of Polkadot?
Polkadot is based on Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) technology. A decentralized network of validators is selected by nominators to secure Polkadot’s entire multichain ecosystem. Validators and nominators get a share of DOT in return. In Mesh Security, by contrast, each chain has its own validator set, and it is the validator’s powers that can be handled and delegated cross-chain.
How does Mesh Security differ from Interchain Security?
The main difference with Interchain Security (ICS) is that ICS works at the validators level, whereas Mesh Security works at the delegators level.
In ICS, the validator set from one blockchain can be used to provide security to another blockchain. In Mesh Security, each blockchain has its own validator set, but the users from one blockchain can cross-delegate to validators on other (one or more) blockchains.
For a blockchain, having your own validator set has its advantages. Native voting power can be used for governance, for example, while signing power can be, fully or in part, cross-delegated over Mesh Security.
If you want to know or explore more, start by taking a look at our always expanding and refining documentation in the mesh-security repository itself, which is public and open source.
