I am currently writing a research paper on BTC bridges. This is what I’ve found during my research:
“renBTC relies completely on one party (“Greycore”) to secure the coins under custody right now”
Furthermore I’ve read:
"The protocol is working as a federated bridge. Details about the number of federators or the level of security are not available either. The cost is around 0.3% for peg-ins and around 0.2% for peg-outs.
“As of now, renBTC is still in its first phase called sub-zero. During this phase, MPC is not yet used as intended because all of renBTC’s nodes establishing the RenVM peg are static nodes that are run and maintained by a core team. While renBTC is aiming to move to fully decentralization aligning the bridge more with Bitcoin’s trust-minimized characteristics, the project is not yet there in Q3 2022.”
Can you let me know if these statements are true or if anything has changed?
I would recommend having a look in this article for more information around the future of Ren and Ren 2.0
At the moment there is no greycore so no type of federation. Currently all execution nodes are run by the team and the goal is to move directly to full decentralization in Ren 2.0
This is great. Just read through everything. When will Ren 2.0 go live, is there a concrete date? (considering the fact that with decentralized tech its always hard to put a concrete date haha)
But, would you subscribe to this paragraph, describing Ren’s current setup:
"Ren’s cross-chain interoperability protocol is currently in the early stages of development. The main idea of the protocol is to secure BTC by consensus using multi-party computation (MPC) where a predefined number of user signatures are required to unlock the funds. In terms of moving BTC from the Ren protocol to Bitcoin’s base layer and vis-a-verca, the cost for peg-ins is around 0.2%, while it costs 0.1% to do peg-outs.
At its current development stage, the protocol is working as a federated bridge. Details about the number of federators or the level of security are not available either. RenBTC is still in its first phase called sub-zero. During this phase, MPCs are used but all of renBTC’s nodes establishing the RenVM peg are static nodes that are run and maintained by a core team. While renBTC is aiming to move to fully decentralization with the launch of Ren 2.0 aligning the bridge more with Bitcoin’s trust-minimized characteristics, the project is not yet there in Q3 2022."
“The cost of peg” can be misinterpreted. The cost of the peg is same as the cost of taking over the network in essence. The fee is what the protocol charges for the various actions such as mint, burn, burn&mint where fees go to the operators securing the network and that fee can be adjusted by governance.
Ren is not a federated bridge. Remove federation altogether, never was and won’t be either. Right now is mostly centralized (The Ren Team operate all nodes that participate in execution) with goal of transitioning to decentralized through Ren 2.0
