One detail I kept coming back to is the 32-byte nonce added to every payload.
It is like locking a short message in a box and placing a long random string inside with it, so no one can guess the message just by looking at the lock.
In Covenants, the protocol does not simply hash the instruction. It appends a 32-byte nonce and then creates the commitment keccak256(payload || nonce). Because many market instructions are short and predictable, this extra randomness makes brute-force guessing impractical.
You gain stronger protection against someone matching the on-chain commitment to a common order. What you pay is 32 bytes of entropy that never appears on-chain and must be stored securely by the author until reveal.
Is 32 extra bytes of hidden randomness a fair price to stop predictable instructions from being guessed?
#nil $NIL @Nillion
It is like locking a short message in a box and placing a long random string inside with it, so no one can guess the message just by looking at the lock.
In Covenants, the protocol does not simply hash the instruction. It appends a 32-byte nonce and then creates the commitment keccak256(payload || nonce). Because many market instructions are short and predictable, this extra randomness makes brute-force guessing impractical.
You gain stronger protection against someone matching the on-chain commitment to a common order. What you pay is 32 bytes of entropy that never appears on-chain and must be stored securely by the author until reveal.
Is 32 extra bytes of hidden randomness a fair price to stop predictable instructions from being guessed?
#nil $NIL @Nillion