A Two-phase Protocol for Atomic Multi-chain Transactions
Abstract: A blockchain enables secure, atomic transactions among untrusted parties. Atomicity is not guaranteed, however, for transactions whose operations span several blockchains; multi-chain atomicity must be enforced by a protocol. Such protocols are known only for special cases, such as cryptocurrency swaps, which are limited only to two chains. We propose a novel two-phase protocol that facilitates atomic executions of general multi-chain (>= 2) transactions. We formally analyze the protocol correctness and show that the proposed abstraction considerably simplifies the development of multi-chain applications. Our experiments with a prototype implementation show that the performance of the general atomicity protocol is comparable to that of custom-built implementations.
Loading