BIP300 · BIP301 · Reference

Drivechain Internals

Three pages on how drivechains actually work underneath — the eight messages, the escrow that governs sidechains and withdrawals, and the auction that moves a sidechain forward one block at a time.

Start with the split

One distinction organises the whole protocol, and most confusing failures come from missing it. Every drivechain message is either an output in a block's coinbase or an output in an ordinary transaction — and that decides who can produce it at all.

Coinbase only M1 · M2 · M3 · M4 · M7

Produced solely by the miner who found the block, in practice one whose template comes from a BIP300/301 enforcer. Cannot be broadcast, cannot be forged.

Ordinary transactions M5 · M6 · M8

Relayed through the mempool by anyone, mined by any miner, paying ordinary fees. Reaching the network and being accepted are different things.

The three pages