Speedster: An Efficient Multi-party State Channel via Enclaves

Abstract

State channel network is the most popular layer-2 solution to the issues of scalability, high transaction fees, and low transaction throughput of public Blockchain networks. However, the existing works have limitations that curb the wide adoption of the technology, such as the expensive creation and closure of channels, strict synchronization between the main chain and off-chain channels, frozen deposits, and inability to execute multi-party smart contracts. In this work, we present Speedster, an account-based state-channel system that aims to address the above issues. To this end, Speedster leverages the latest development of secure hardware to create dispute-free certified channels that can be operated efficiently off the Blockchain. Speedster is peer-to-peer decentralized and provides better privacy protection than prior channel projects. It supports fast native multi-party contract execution, which is previously unavailable in TEE-enabled channel networks. Compared to the Lightning Network, Speedster improves the throughput by about 10,000X and generates 97%$ less on-chain data with a comparable network scale.