Liquid Network

Basics

• Based in:
• Founded on October 12, 2015, Blockstream announced the release of its Liquid sidechain which could allow for the transfer of assets between the sidechain and the main blockchain
• Mainnet release:
• A sidechain created by Blockstream that uses the strong federations model. A federation of entities must sign-off on movements to and from the sidechain, so more parties must be compromised for a failure situation to unfold where the bitcoins frozen on the main chain are stolen.
• The sidechain is used to transfer bitcoins between centralized bitcoin institutions, such as exchanges, at a faster pace than the public Bitcoin blockchain.

History

• Has been created by Blockstream, a company that become known for having many Bitcoin Core developers. After Bitcoin had scaling issues for multiple years, which some blame on blocksize increase stalling by Blockstream, Blockstream announced their sidechain solution.

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Bugs/Exploits

From Bitcoin.com (7-10-2021):

"Liquid network’s block signing had been down and was initially expected to be for a total of 24 hours. On October 5, Wertheimer said: “Liquid has been down for 15 hours and still no one noticed, good morning.” Blockstream’s Liquid network upgrade is well documented in the company’s blog section. One particular post called “Preparing the Liquid Network for Dynamic Federations” written by Phil Mclean, explains the engineer’s actions in greater detail. Prior to the 3:44 p.m. announcement on Twitter that Liquid had resumed, the first known instance of the block signing issue was tweeted by the official Twitter account 22 hours before. The tweet was then followed by two more instances of tweets that referenced the sidechain’s “issue with block signing.”

• From CoinDesk (27-6-2020):

"Bitcoins stored on the Liquid Network were temporarily able to be seized by network moderators Thursday night. The potential vulnerability in the Bitcoin sidechain’s security parameters was discovered by Summa founder James Prestwich."

Governance

Admin Keys

• From LN Markets (29-7-2021):

"Functionaries validate blocks - each block needs to be signed by at least two-thirds of the functionaries - and manage and secure the BTCs held by the federation on Bitcoin blockchain."

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].
• Built on:
• Programming language used:

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS):
• Latency:

How it works

• From LN Markets (29-7-2021):

"Liquid consensus is federated and relies on a set of trusted functionaries, primarily crypto financial institutions. Its stated goal is to provide confidential, fast and final settlements: around 2 minutes for Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) and to enable the issuance of tokenized assets on top of it.

There is a 2-way peg between Liquid and Bitcoin. To join the Liquid network, users must peg-in their Bitcoins, sending their BTC to a specific peg-in address. After 102 blocks confirmations (~17 hours on average), users can claim the equivalent quantity of Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) that can be used on the Liquid network. To exit Liquid, users create a peg-out transaction in the Liquid transactions, which will be processed in between 11 to 35 minutes."

Their Other Projects

DEX

• From this article (8-9-2020):

"Blockstream announced its entry into the DeFi ecosystem with the launch of its decentralized exchange, TDEX. The exchange, built by Sevenlabs, a consultancy and licensing firm dealing with crypto, launched its Open Alpha Phase on September 7, 2020. According to the statement at launch, TDEX will leverage atomic swaps allowing users to send faster transactions and decentralize the exchange altogether. Atomic swaps is a peer-to-peer exchange network being tested on Bitcoin that allows direct exchange of crypto without the need for a central party like an exchange."

ICO

• "BTSE, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange, is looking to raise (9-12-2019) $50 million in one of the first token offerings on the Liquid Network. Others include gaming startup Pixelmatic (run by Samson Mow, Blockstream's CSO and Seiche's beau), which has been seeking to raise $16 million, and Puerto Rican financial institution Zenus Bank, which planned to do a private placement of securities."
• As one Eric Conner tweeted (9-12-2019): "After non-stop bashing of Ethereum for the exact same thing, Blockstream enters the ICO game.".

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• Created by Blockstream.