AliceNet — An Efficient UTXO-model Blockchain
Ethereum’s account-based transaction model is one of its defining characteristics. Within Ethereum, an account-based transaction is a single operation that must be initiated from an externally owned account (EOA). This operation can either send data or value to a single smart contract, deploy a single smart contract, or send value to another EOA. This design limits the abilities of an EOA so that anything more complex than a simple migration of value between two addresses requires a smart contract. For example, sending value to more than one user in a single transaction requires smart contract logic.
Unfortunately, smart contracts are prone to error and difficult to generalize; thus, widespread adoption of smart contract-based wallets has not been popular and may even encounter friction in the future. The reason for such friction stems from the fact that many projects have resorted to restricting access to their smart contract infrastructure such that only EOAs may interact. These arbitrary restrictions are largely an attempt to reduce the attack surface of different systems but rarely have a substantial impact on overall security. Additionally, the resource-consuming nature of smart contract creation means that many users can’t afford to deploy custom handler contracts for niche functionality. This lack of wallet infrastructure, the high cost of contract deployment, and the complexity of contract development means most users are subject to the constraint of performing only one operation per transaction. This restriction is tolerable to most users as the depth of services, features, and functionality within Ethereum is sufficient that the oddities of account-based architecture are more than acceptable. However, this is still rather limiting for enterprises and developers that are constrained by the total block space available.
AliceNet differs from most Layer 2 (L2) blockchains, and Ethereum itself, by using a UTXO-based transaction model. UTXO-based transactions consume a list of objects and then generate a list of new objects as their output; thus, a single transaction can perform many operations in parallel. Bitcoin itself uses the UTXO-based transaction model and has successfully operated for many years without any exploits being found in the UTXO-based system. Unlike Bitcoin, though, AliceNet has no scripting language and operates more akin to an extensible system of precompiled smart contract templates. Simply, each transaction in AliceNet encompasses its own complex smart contract, as defined by the user at the time of construction. The logic of a smart contract is created inside the transaction by chaining together a set of small operations. Each operation is defined by the UTXOs consumed and created, where multiple such creations and destructions occur as an all-or-nothing operation called a transaction. The composition of these simple operations is leveraged to create complex interactions, such as performing secure escrow for the exchange of assets between individuals.
The UTXO-based transaction model enables users to get all of the benefits of complex logic handling that comes with predefined smart contracts, yet retain the ability to perform these operations in an optimized way. This means the same actions users perform in Ethereum can be replicated in AliceNet, but without requiring smart contract code — or even deploying a smart contract at all. Better yet, users can also securely perform multiple operations in a single transaction, with only the overhead of a normal transaction, while reducing the possibility of error and unnecessary loss of funds. In other words, we built an L2 chain designed to be an optimal solution for common problems that many projects and users experience when dealing with the Ethereum blockchain, such as sends of value, state channels, open order book marketplaces, token sales, and even NFT launches. Since AliceNet hasn’t been built to do everything possible under a Turing complete system, such as the EVM, AliceNet only has to complete the set of tasks it was built for more efficiently, and thus more affordably, than is possible in Ethereum itself.
For more information on AliceNet please checkout our Github Page: https://github.com/alicenet
