[PERCH] bolt
bolt – Enabling Preconfirmations with Proposer Commitments
This post is in response to [Proposal] PERCH: Protocol Evaluation and Request Coordination Hub
bolt TLDR
-
With bolt, users can receive near-instant confirmation on non-contentious transactions through inclusion preconfirmations. Actions like transfers, approvals, and mints, which previously took an average of 7 seconds, can now be preconfirmed in approximately 250ms. Users can be confident in these ‘promises of inclusion’, as they are backed by economic collateral and enforced by slashing conditions.
-
Starting with inclusion preconfirmations on Ethereum, bolt enables validators to further monetize their blockspace. Bolt leverages proposer commitments—a novel primitive that allows proposers (validators) to make credible commitments on the blocks they produce—to achieve this. Bolt is fully PBS-compatible, allowing validators to access ancillary revenue streams without giving up MEV rewards.
-
Bolt starts with inclusion pre-confirmations but is designed to be flexible to unlock a variety of use cases. Promising applications include encrypted transaction inclusion, event-driven promises, settlement guarantees for dApps and rollups—and most notably, based sequencing. In future iterations, bolt plans to expand to other commitment types, such as blockspace claims, to potentially enable execution preconfirmations and blockspace futures.
For more information please refer to our Lido Alliance proposal
PERCH Expectations
-
Number of Participants:
We are looking to onboard all Node Operators (NOs) and validators. While we do not need all validators to test bolt on Holesky—our current development stage—for mainnet deployment, full Ethereum validator network adoption is our target. The use cases for bolt work best with complete network participation.
-
Application Form:
We are assembling a Node Operator Working Group with a staged process:
- Cohort 1: Node Operators helping run and test bolt on Holesky.
- Cohort 2: Node Operators participating on mainnet.
We encourage all Node Operators, regardless of the stage you wish to participate in, to fill out and sign this form if interested or reach out to us directly. Our Working Group will entail bi-weekly calls that include an open Q&A with our development team.
-
Testing Outline:
Bolt’s off-chain components for NOs include running a modified MEV-Boost along with a bolt sidecar. On-chain components include a registry and challenger contract, and restaking contracts with either Symbiotic or Eigenlayer. We are currently testing on Holesky (and previously on Helder). We plan to continue testing on Holesky throughout Q4 of 2024. Based on these tests, we aim to be ready to run Bolt on mainnet ideally by Q1 2025.
-
Requirements:
Alignment with Ethereum Roadmap:
- Bolt ultimately accelerates Ethereum’s roadmap towards stronger censorship resistance properties (Inclusion Lists, PEPC), de-fragmentation (based sequencing), and fast UX (preconfs).
- Bolt’s permissionless nature makes it unopinionated in the current relay and builder market competition. We believe that having an opinionated solution that could potentially favor specific relays or builders is fundamentally unhealthy for Ethereum.
- Bolt’s proposer-centric design ensures Ethereum doesn’t increase its reliance on trusted entities within the block-production pipeline. This is crucial to avoid adding to existing centralizing pressures and allows validators to directly issue commitments.
- Bolt is expressive and future-proof. It is designed to unlock a variety of use-cases through the support of diverse commitment types, while also remaining compatible with the potential transition towards ePBS.
Neutrality and Inclusivity:
- As mentioned above, bolt is proposer-centric and unopinionated in the current builder relay market competition. Validators do not need to delegate responsibilities to these sophisticated actors when issuing commitments.
Adherence to Community Standards:
- Bolt is fully open-source and compatible with others MEV/commitment related protocols. We are compatible/integrate with MEV-boost, commit-boost, helix, and support both Symbiotic and Eigenlayer.
- Bolt continues to focus its design decisions around feedback from the Lido community, keeping Lido’s MEV policy and REGOOSE initiatives in mind.
Security Best Practices:
- Chainbound, the development team behind bolt, implements regular internal and external code reviews, particularly from the protocol teams of our integration partners.
- We are in the process of securing our first audit partner for our Holesky deployment, with more planned for both Holesky and mainnet.
Complementary Use Cases:
- Bolt is built with inclusion preconfirmations as its initial focus, but is designed to be flexible to unlock a variety of use cases. Promising applications include inclusion lists, encrypted transaction channels, event-driven promises, settlement guarantees for dApps and rollups, as well as based sequencing.
