# Collateral Mining

As some of you know, I've been working on my own collateral-based mining pool. This will just be another option, along with @mhs_sam's pool. I thought I would post my collateral box script here for public review, in case I've missed any obvious issues:

    {
val poolReward = 67500000000L
{
// Case 1: block was mined by alice.
// Either: (a) we have 1 output of value poolReward,
// or: (b) we have 2 outputs, 1st is poolReward, 2nd goes to self.
decodePoint(CONTEXT.minerPubKey) == alice &&
HEIGHT > SELF.creationInfo._1 &&
OUTPUTS(0).value == poolReward && {
OUTPUTS.size == 1 || {
OUTPUTS.size == 2 &&
OUTPUTS(1).propositionBytes == SELF.propositionBytes &&
OUTPUTS(1).creationInfo._1 == HEIGHT
}
}
} || {
// Case 2: anyone can top-up with more collateral funds.
OUTPUTS(0).propositionBytes == SELF.propositionBytes &&
OUTPUTS(0).creationInfo._1 >= SELF.creationInfo._1 &&
OUTPUTS(0).value > SELF.value
} || {
// Case 3: alice can withdraw collateral at any time.
proveDlog(alice)
}
}


Edit: fixed a bug that would have allowed chained spending in a single block.

The main limitation of this approach is that only one unspent collateral box should exist at any time for a given miner public key. Otherwise, a pool can spend more than one box in the same block and claim a multiple of the reward. However, I think this is reasonable, and it becomes too complex if miners have to create special signatures to avoid this. The top-up mechanism (case 2) allows anyone to top-up a given collateral box.

Another small point is that the pool reward could be adjusted to be a bit under 67.5 ERG to provide additional incentives, though I would note that the miner already gets to keep all the fees if they mine a block.

• This collateral mechanism was proposed here by @scalahub back in July 2019!
• The paper by @kushti and @scalahub is here.
• Full discussion here