RGB v0.11 Beta 7 is out

2024-08-20

LNP/BP Standards Association is happy to announce the seventh beta release of RGB version 0.11.

What's new in Beta 7

Consensus-level changes

Beta 7 completes an important feature which will be required by any DeFi smart contract: introspection of the contract state from inside AluVM scripts. While before it was possible to access state from the current operation only, in this release we have implemented a new engine for dynamically computing and updating global contract state during the validation itself, such that scripts can also access global state and outputs known to the contract.

This feature comes hand-in-hand with an improved ordering of the global state data. We introduce a new nonce field in RGB operations, which allows to enforce the same deterministic ordering for mempool, lightning channel and on-chain transactions. You can read more about this feature in RCP-240731A proposal.

Improved persistence

Previously, the state for each contract have to be fully stored in the memory. Beta 7 introduces a new contract state engine, which works with the consensus level, but allows to keep the state in some external storage, like file, database etc., not fully loading it into the memory. This allows to ensure that validation can run efficiently in all environment, from enterprise setups to restricted embedded systems, like hardware wallets.

Beta 7 adds support for automatic detection of contract and stash data changes and automated saving of the modified data, as well as recovery from the I/O failures, ensuring that the persisted state is always consistent. This should work well with database environments and their transaction-commit- rollback workflows.

Support for re-orgs and RBFs

For the first time we added ability to the RGB wallet library to support both RBF transactions and properly react on blockchain re-orgs, whenever they happen. This was achieved due to the complete refactoring of how the RGB wallet operates. Previously, wallet was tracking only bitcoin transactions belonging to the wallet descriptor; however in RGB validity of operation also depends on a second bitcoin transaction, called "witness transactions", which contain the commitment for the single-use seals -- the mechanism by which RGB prevents double-spending of the client-side state. In order to be valid, RGB state must belong to an operation output for which all previous history of the operation graph is commited by the witness transactions included into the blockchain and lightning state channels. As you see, a re-org, RBF transaction change or Lightining channel update changes that validity, and the new wallet engine allows us to efficiently track those changes in automatic fashion without creating excessive blockchain indexer requests.

Support for hot wallets

Since RGB uses a novel type of bitcoin transaction commitments, taprets (OP_RETURN commitments residing inside taproot tree), RGB taproot wallets are not supported by rust-bitcoin, miniscript and BDK libraries. Thus, starting from 2022, LNP/BP Association was working on new and modern rust implementation of bitcoin protocol named BP libraries. This release for the first time ships with new version of BP supporting creation of hot wallets, which removes the last obstacle in working with RGB in taproot.

Improved Lightning functionality

Support of the Lightning network was significantly improved in this release; including ability to efficiently handle RGB assets after a non-cooperative channel closings and ability to handle state channel updates which doesn't modify RGB state -- a feature important when you perform a bitcoin payment inside an RGB channel, or when the channel operates multiple RGB assets.

Invoice changes

RGB20 fungible assets, alike many other token standards, may have a different precision, defining the asset divisibility. For instance, Bitcoin has precision of 8 digits (1 sat = 0.00000001 BTC), USDT -- 6 digits etc. RGB invoices specify the amount of the assets to transfer as an integer, i.e. as an amount of the smallest asset units. This may confuse users, since the transfer of 100 USDTs will specify 100000000 as the amount. In order to avoid the confusion, starting the beta 7 the specific asset amount in the RGB invoices is encoded in a non-human readable form.

Other wallet improvements

Beta 7 adds support for Mempool extensions to the Esplora REST APIs, allowing using it as a backend indexer for RGB wallets.

Many developers experience issues with Bitcoin Testnet, due to its spam pollution. A new proposal of testnet re-load, named Testnet4, gains more and more traction. The current release adds support of Testnet4 network to all RGB and wallet libraries.

In this version we also added ability to automatically resolve collisions between different commitment methods which may happen due to user mistakes. Now, if your taproot-based wallet will receive an RGB payment with non-tapret single-use seal (which may happen also due to an adversarial payee) the wallet will be able to see and use those funds with no manual recovery or adjustments.

What's next

Beta 7 release continues a phase of preparation for a public preview of the RGB v0.11. All parties are strongly recommended switching to this latest beta, which contains a number of critical bugfixes, and provide us feedback their feedback.

Beta 7 was a result of internal audit and testing effort, we do together with [Bitfinex Labs], which will continue with external audit in the following week. In this way we plan to ensure the system security and safety before the final release.

You can track us on our journey towards v0.11 release with this GitHub dashboard.

About RGB v0.11

RGB v0.11 is an evolution of the protocol coming with a lot of bug fixes and improvements, further enhancing RGB smart contracting capabilities. It will be the first version which will be audited by independent auditors, after which it can be considered by third-party issuers for the use in production.

The main features shipping in v0.11 are:

  • Wallet integration right into RGB runtime and command-line tool;
  • Basic support for Liquid sidechain, with ability to add more alternative scalability layers in the future;
  • Scripting, with new contract state introspection codes and RGB assembly compiler;
  • Initial support for Contractum language;
  • Ability to inherit interfaces (multiple inheritance!);
  • Support of Electrum RPC and Mempool REST additionally to Esplora REST, present before;
  • Commitments to issuer and developer identities embedded into contracts, interfaces, libraries;
  • More compact consignments and better ASCII armoring.

Contributing

RGB is a free software and opensourc effort, built by community. The development is supervised by a non-profit LNP/BP Standards Association, which uses open approach: anybody from the community can propose a request for RGB change ([RCP]), ask a question in discussions, open an issue in GitHub, propose a pull request or review pull requests of others. The association also maintains public roadmap summarizing the current development progress and listing all issues and pull requests across multiple repositories and GitHub organizations related to the RGB.

Specifically, we are also looking for qualified auditors and penetration testers who can contribute into making RGB more secure and robust. We plan a grant program to facilitate this process; with any enquiries please contact us via [email protected].

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Fulgur Ventures, continuing their multi-year support for our efforts in developing RGB, as well as other Association members, including Bitlight Labs, who had become a major contributor to RGB development. We are grateful to all commercial companies, building on RGB, and providing their support, contributions and feedback, including Bitfinex, Pandora Prime, and DIBA. We are also grateful for individual contributors, who do their small -- but still highly valuable and welcomed input in making RGB better.