Telegram Tidbits: Late January
Secret notes in v2, Offshift vs Nocturne, and oracles.
January 22nd
Community member Plutocat asked:
In V2 will there be anything that the user has to manage besides their private key (like note storage or something?) or will the dapp be fully usable with just Metamask?
Neo:
The dapp will contain all of those. it will be pretty similar with the way the testnet already is.
Plutocat:
Does that mean everything is stored onchain?
Neo:
The main parts are stored on chain but locally the secrets and the amounts are stored. But we utilize the localdb apis in the browser so you don’t have to download any files. And your secrets stay isolated. In a similar way to how metamask works.
Plutocat:
What happens if I clear my browser data?
Isaac.near:
Or redeem from other devices?
Plutocat:
I’m trying to understand if there’s any secret notes that need to be kept safe in order to redeem from another device or if a private key is all you need.
Neo:
You will lose your utxo. But we will make the ability to back it up
Plutocat:
Ok, that’s a great idea. This is definitely an important aspect of UX. I think a noob friendly blog post on what these notes are and how they should be managed would be valuable as reference material in a beginner guide.
James W:
Why you’re not using the onchain note storage from v1? save gas fees? Imho keeping the secrets / amounts only locally, and if you delete them they‘re gone, does not sound very user friendly
Neo:
That’s how metamask works. If you delete your browser data including the extension data, you lose everything.
James W:
Sorry, I don‘t see how this is similar to how metamask works. If I clear my browser cache, I‘m not deleting anything in metamask. So will the Offshift vault survive this? (on current testnet it’s not).
And metamask (wallets and associated tokens/amounts) can be fully recovered (on any device) by the secret recovery phrase.
I understand that metamask is in principle a local vault, to which it somehow syncs the publicly available on-chain data. But that‘s not working out when there is no on-chain data, like with Offshift right?
Neo:
Well actually but in that case it’s exactly the same as importing a backup
James W:
So backup means a file which needs to be downloaded / uploaded?
Neo:
Backing up your utxos is the same saving your seed phrase in some sense. It isn’t exactly the same of course if that’s the argument here, but ux wise it’s pretty similar.
James W:
So it‘s twelve 4letter words vs a multi-byte file right? that‘s quite a difference in usability.
Plutocat:
But if someone’s found your utxo’s they couldn’t steal anything right? You would need the private key for that?
Neo:
Yeah, they can spend them. Though those files can be encrypted.
James W:
Why is the on-chain storage not used anymore?
Neo:
It’s for saving gas costs and if you would like to save it on-chain, there’s no problem. You just have to pay the gas fees. Offshift is an open decentralized protocol and our goal is to allow you to do whatever you want.
James W:
So there will be an option in the app?
Neo:
Right now we didn’t implement it yet, but we will look into the options. Though it’s a possibility, yes.
Plutocat:
Ultimately, there could be a more efficient solution involving encrypted off-chain decentralized storage? Where the users’ private key could encrypt the UTXOs and relieve them of management responsibility in exchange for some small cost? (I’m not a dev so may not be speaking practically here)
Neo:
There are numerous solutions we are considering right now, each has their own advantages/disadvantages. It isn’t as small as you might think, could 2x the current gas cost really.
Plutocat:
I was trying to consider some IPFS-like alternative to onchain storage as a cheaper solution rather than onchain.
Neo:
Nah you are overthinking it.
Plutocat:
Lol ok
Neo:
It really comes back to backup a local file. Arguably you can just download the encrypted file and upload it to a cloud drive. If you really want to, you can use ipfs but that isn’t the right use case of it. Since anyone would be able to access your encrypted file.
Plutocat:
Yeah but no one would recommend doing that with a private key. And if I’m understanding correctly, this data is the equivalent of the private key for Offshift ecosystem.
Neo:
And no one would recommend doing it on-chain either :)
James W:
Why would you not recommend to store the secrets on chain, only encrypted by your private key? How is that different vs all other data (tokens) on chain which is accessible only with the correct private key?
Neo:
Well because anyone would be able to get your secrets. And if there’s an issue with the cryptographic algorithm, we would let all of our users face the same risk. So the argument here becomes whether we want to put all of our eggs in one basket or not.
James W:
Alright I somehow thought this would also be kind of the standard algo used for public/private key encryption. But if you‘re using new tech I can understand your argument.
Plutocat:
Oof ok, I think I’m a bit out of my league here but appreciate your thoughts.
Neo:
No, I like discussing the idea with you. We really have a solution internally but we don’t want to promise it until it’s implemented.
January 23rd
Community member Plutocat asked:
It would be really great to hear teams thoughts on this: https://x.com/nocturne_xyz/status/1749510390906511693 . Perhaps an opportunity to engage with the discussion on twitter with how Offshift overcomes some of these challenges faced by Nocturne?
Neo:
Nocturne is a project with decent tech and engineering behind it that can’t be denied, that being said, Offshift tries to address a different issue in defi mainly focusing on on-chain private derivatives. Also thanks to our pureL1Rollup and the p2p prover network, gas isn’t much of an issue to us (also related to not storing the secrets on-chain). We are almost at the gas cost of a uniswap swap, which is the most used defi app.
January 26th
Community member Mention All asked the following regarding the implementation of oracles:
Are we going to create a private oracle or use the existing oracles?
Greybeard:
The existing oracle will be used (with modifications), but in a private context.
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