Why is the contest period of Side-chain so long？

[yj1190590]

Hi:
It's about the  side-chains white papper.
Because the biggest reorganisation length is less than 6, which is about an hour.
Why do we need 24 hours to prevent reorganisation?

[HeRetiK]

Educated guess: For added security, similar to how freshly mined blocks can't be spent until they are 100 blocks deep.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin's security model is largely probabilistic, meaning that while 6 confirmations are fairly safe, there's still a slight chance of a successful (and costly) double-spend attack. Or an accidental fork, even.

Now if a handful transactions get lost or double-spent, that would be already bad enough. Now imagine the same happening with either freshly mined blocks or a sidechain settlement -- an incredibly large amount of transactions would suddenly be invalid and a significant amount of economical activity would be lost. It follows that a generous safety margin is prudent.

There might be other reasons as well though. I haven't looked all that deeply into sidechains to be honest.

[yj1190590]

Educated guess: For added security, similar to how freshly mined blocks can't be spent until they are 100 blocks deep.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin's security model is largely probabilistic, meaning that while 6 confirmations are fairly safe, there's still a slight chance of a successful (and costly) double-spend attack. Or an accidental fork, even.

Now if a handful transactions get lost or double-spent, that would be already bad enough. Now imagine the same happening with either freshly mined blocks or a sidechain settlement -- an incredibly large amount of transactions would suddenly be invalid and a significant amount of economical activity would be lost. It follows that a generous safety margin is prudent.

There might be other reasons as well though. I haven't looked all that deeply into sidechains to be honest.

Doesn't that added security cost too much?
I mean that costs almost a day every time we transfer assets。

[HeRetiK]

Doesn't that added security cost too much?
I mean that costs almost a day every time we transfer assets.

The way I understand sidechains they only hit the mainchain when settlement is necessary, not for every single asset transfer. Similar to Lightning Network's channel opening and closing transactions.

In other words, unless there's a dispute that needs to be handled on the mainchain, the transfer time of sidechain assets should not be affected by the the amount of mainchain confirmations being required for settlement.