How does Minimal Viable Plasma handle more than 2 inputs for a transaction?

Question

Vitalik Buterin proposed Minimal Viable Plasma in 2018. When describing the functionality, he mentions the format of a UTXO plasma transaction to be

[blknum1, txindex1, oindex1, sig1, # Input 1
 blknum2, txindex2, oindex2, sig2, # Input 2
 newowner1, denom1,                # Output 1
 newowner2, denom2,                # Output 2
 fee]

This structure leads to a misunderstandings for me, which I think is best illustrated by an example:

Assume Alice owns 1 ETH and wants to send 1 ETH to Bob, who owns 4 ETH. We assume the transaction does not require any fees. She received 1 ETH from Charlie in the first (0-indexed) transaction in Block 3, where her output was 2nd. Therefore, she fills the input 1 field with (3, 0, 1, [signature of the previous 3 values with Alice's key]). Alice's second input is empty, as she does not need it to complete the transaction to Bob. The Plasma transaction Alice sends is therefore:

[3, 0, 1, (Alice's signature), # Input 1
 0, 0, 0, 0, # Input 2
 [Alice's Address], 0,                # Output 1
 [Bob's address], 5,                # Output 2
 0]

However, what happens if Alice wants to send 1 ETH to Bob, but got this through 3 transactions e.g. 0.2 ETH from Sender 1, 0.3 ETH from Sender 2 and 0.5 ETH from Sender 3? The field only allows for 2 inputs, but no combination of size 2 consisting of Alice's UTXO's allows for this, how is this addressed?

Answer 1

How does Minimal Viable Plasma handle more than 2 inputs for a transaction?

As per my understanding, it doesn't. That's why it's only the Minimal Viable specification.

"Each transaction has 2 inputs and 2 outputs, and the sum of the denominations of the outputs plus the fee must equal the sum of the denominations of the inputs."

However, what happens if Alice wants to send 1 ETH to Bob, but got this through 3 transactions e.g. 0.2 ETH from Sender 1, 0.3 ETH from Sender 2 and 0.5 ETH from Sender 3? The field only allows for 2 inputs, but no combination of size 2 consisting of Alice's UTXO's allows for this, how is this addressed?

In that situation, ALICE has 3 UTXOs, so she could send a first transaction combining two inputs (2 out of her 3 UTXO's) into a single output sent to her address. She would then be left with only 2 UTXOs that she can combine in a second transaction to BOB for a value of 1 (assuming that fees are 0).

Similarly with >= 2 outputs you can split an input, this is especially usefull when you need to pay an amount X but only have one UTXO with a value greater than X, you can then split it into 2 outputs, the first one of value X to the address you are sending, and the second one is the change that goes back to your address directly.