CivKit Roadmap: BOLT12 Offers, Staking Credentials, Mainstay & More
"The CivKit Node is an experimental Nostr relay, complemented by the ongoing development of communications gateways for BOLT8 Noise transport and BOLT4 sphinx onion routing, thus enabling Nostr services to be accessed over the Lightning network."
- "The main service supported by the CivKit node is a market board, where multiple connected nodes can form a peer-to-peer market system."
The CivKit Node is relaying on few building blocks:
- BOLT12 Offers. "BOLT12 is a next-generation payment protocol simplifying the process of requesting and making Lightning Network payments. For the CivKit, offers allows selective revealment of fields for trade intermediation and extensible format to add new custom information for each type of trades, among other advantages."
- Onion Messaging. "Onion messaging is an onion-routing network already builted in the Lightning Network, initially used to carry on HTLC payments. For the CivKit, onion messaging can be used to transport offers in a privacy-preserving fashion, while benefiting from the anonymous set constitutes by the Lightning network nodes."
- Nostr Relay/Client. "Nostr is a communication protocol to transport data notes between relays and clients, with the fundamental feature of moving the key-management and state on the client-side compared to traditional communication protocol like HTTP. For the CivKit, Nostr architecture enables clients to switch from a market board to another with low-migration cost, and thus react to market dynamics."
- Mainstay. "Mainstay is a notarization protocol based on the Bitcoin blockchain, where the attestation issuer can have their data payload stamped into the chain, with a unique history of attestion (i.e a
proof-of-immutable-state). For the CivKit, notarization of offers enable to verify the board offers history and therefore its quality as a board in a trust-minimized fashion. Compared to other notarization protocol, market boards cannot equivocate on their history, and selectively reveal advantageous offers." - Staking Credentials. "Staking Credentials are anti-DoS tokens enabling a server to protect its ressources by requesting the client a pre-payment in an exchange of a privacy-preserving credentials. For the CivKit, this enables the market board to manage their publication space ressources in a fashion aligned with the clients incentives."
- "CivKit aims to offer good interfaces for clients softwares, where they can access market board services over standard Nostr or Lightning communication channels. Expected Q4 2023."
