CPS on Light Client Protocols

[cleanerm5]

Hi,

There are a few activities ongoing that require the development of so called light client protocols for Cardano. The ones that came to my awareness are:

• the IBC implementation of CF (https://github.com/cardano-foundation/cardano-ibc-incubator)
• the Bitcoin-Cardano bridge proposed by BitcoinOS and with the general approach described in this paper (https://assets-global.website-files.com/661e3b1622f7c56970b07a4c/662a7a89ce097389c876db57_BitSNARK__Grail.pdf)
• the IOG research work on trust-minimized light client based wallets

There are various ways how to implement light clients on Cardano (whereas because of the core protocol not providing so called state proofs out of the box, there is no canonical light client design available for Cardano at the moment). In that sense, I wanted to create a common point of reference and problem description with this CPS to which concrete light client designs can refer to when they are documented as a CIP.

At least for the IBC implementation we plan to document the Mithril based light client as a CIP and the same would make sense for the respective light client protocol to be developed for a Bitcoin-Cardano bridge (in case the bridge follows a light client based security model), because both designs can be used for other use cases as well.

Any feedback is highly appreciated.

Kind regards