Bitrabo Editorial
Matthias Benkort, the Technical Director at the Cardano Foundation, known as @KtorZ, has managed to encapsulate the entire Bitcoin blockchain within a single block on the Cardano blockchain. This groundbreaking development has created waves in the blockchain community, showcasing the potential for advanced data management and cross-chain interoperability.
Significance for Cardano and Blockchain Technology
Benkort introduced a new open-source library on GitHub called “Merkle Patricia Forestry.” This library offers a range of tools, both on-chain and off-chain, tailored to work with Merkle Patricia Tries on Cardano. A Merkle Patricia Trie is a persistent and authenticated data structure used to map arbitrary keys to values efficiently and securely.
The Merkle Patricia Forestry library enables swift membership, insertion, and deletion of key/value items in a large store, utilizing a root hash digest and a concise proof. It incorporates optimizations inspired by Ethereum’s Modified Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) while introducing a novel approach with Sparse Merkle Trees for smaller proof sizes.
Insights and Demonstrations
Benkort’s implementation allows for the mapping of arbitrary keys to values while supporting operations based on a small hash and a succinct proof. He demonstrated the library’s capabilities through a transaction that compressed the entire Bitcoin block header hashes into just 32 bytes, showcasing the efficient continuation of the chain with minimal data overhead.
Future Applications and Possibilities
Benkort highlighted potential use cases for this technology, such as trustless bridges and large key/value stores managed entirely on-chain. He envisioned scenarios like domains registries, financial market data feeds, and GitHub statistics, where institutions could publish extensive datasets on-chain, serving as oracles for future smart contract applications.
In his closing remarks, Benkort reflected on the project’s journey, initially a side project that evolved into a significant release due to recent interest in the concept. His open-sourcing of the project marks a meaningful step towards wider adoption and innovation in the blockchain space.
Current trading for Cardano (ADA) stands at $0.455 at the time of reporting.