[Cryptography] Internet independent Blockchain

[Matthieu CHARETTE]

Hi,

I'm working on a very light cryptocurrency that would be usable on devices
without an internet connection. It's a trial before anything else. I do not
intent to use it as a real currency but more like a token.

Those devices cannot connect to the internet. We can only connect them
physically with a cable to share data. Also they only have one port. This
means that we can only connect one unique device to another at the same
time. The last thing is that we do not connect those devices often.
Something like once a day, we connect our device (to sync them) to one or
two close neighbors (possibly always the same) one at the time.

This setup requires some edits of the original idea of Satoshi since it
would be some kind of a network with connectivity problems during 99% of
the time. Each node would then start mining alone creating a bunch of fork
of the Blockchain. And at the end of the day the most powerful device would
always win. Killing other's work of the entire day. Note that PoS can't be
used because of the lack of connectivity. Or at least the problem would be
easier to solve with PoW because you can do it alone. But if someone is
able to solve it with PoS that fine for me.

So I've been thinking on a Blockchain that we can fork and merge. This
would allow devices to work alone without losing their work after syncing.
The idea is that after the last sync (a connection between two devices),
both devices start mining alone. Each one would have it's own Blockchain
fork. When they meet again, each device send its fork to the other device.
And both start to mine a block that would have two parent blocks
referencing both forks.

While it should work most of the time, this idea cannot work if a double
spending attempt occurs. This means that if someone sends a transaction to
the first miner. And another transaction moving the same token to a
different address to the second miner. (Both transactions need to be sent
between two syncs). When the two miners will try to sync, there will be
some conflicts. And the only way to continue is to discard one fork.
Meaning that one miner would lose it's work.
And because of that, miner will not take the risk to accept too much
transactions because one invalid transaction could make them lose their
money earned with mining. So miner will only take transactions with high
fee reward.
That's my current main problem.

Another problem is that miners could also lose their work while a block
reward drop occurs. But since it doesn't occurs often (every four years for
Bitcoin) we can mostly ignore it.

Maybe someone already worked on something similar. I tried to find
something on the internet about "merge able Blockchain" but all I can find
those days is the Ethereum merge which is really not helpful. I'm open to
any suggestions and proposition. And I hope I was clear in my explanations.
Tell me if you don't understand something.
I may also make some drawings soon or later to explain this better.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20221129/978d8ef3/attachment.htm>