public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Jonathan Voss <k98kurz@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Post-Quantum commit / reveal Fawkescoin variant as a soft fork
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2025 11:54:08 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <16f0f405-3f39-498e-9399-a6050773c4c7n@googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <aD2J9HNJUqaod0n2@petertodd.org>


[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2767 bytes --]

If using a monetary network requires out-of-band payments, then that 
severely limits the actual utility of the monetary network as a medium of 
exchange. Imagine if the only way to make a bank transfer was to first go 
in-person to the bank of the recipient of the transfer to give them 
something that then allowed your bank to make the transfer -- it would be 
an unworkable monetary system. Similarly, if future Bitcoin transactions 
require making out-of-band payments, then it has failed as a monetary 
network with an endogenous unit of account. The whole system has to work 
without reliance upon exogenous monetary media or mechanisms. As such, the 
commit-and-reveal scheme fails to maintain the monetary properties of the 
network as a whole unless we assert reliance upon altruism to get the 
commitments into the blockchain, which instead breaks the incentive-based 
game theoretic design. Maybe it would work as a stop-gap solution in the 
event of the advent of a relevant quantum computer, but it is certainly not 
a good long-term plan as currently formulated.

Recall the original premise: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash 
System". If you can't transact with it as cash, i.e. as the ultimate 
endogenous settlement mechanism, then it is no longer Bitcoin. Requiring an 
exogenous system fundamentally breaks the model.

-- Jonathan

On Monday, June 2, 2025 at 9:53:55 AM UTC-4 Peter Todd wrote:

> On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 03:00:41PM -0700, Jonathan Voss wrote:
> > As far as I can tell, the main flaw in commit/reveal protocols is in the 
> > commit phase: if revealing a commitment with N confirmations is required 
> to 
> > spend bitcoins, then, without spending any bitcoins, how do you get the 
> > commitment into the blockchain in the first place? Maybe I am just 
> > misunderstanding this. If so, then a commit/reveal scheme may be a 
> workable 
> > solution.
>
> You can always purchase new BTC to perform the commitment.
>
> Indeed, this problem is often seen in alt-coins where fees must be paid in 
> a
> native asset, while users are trying to send some kind of tokenized asset 
> like
> a USD token. You can have funds that you can't move because you don't have 
> the
> correct asset. While annoying, this isn't a fatal problem.
>
> -- 
> https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bitcoin Development Mailing List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bitcoindev+unsubscribe@googlegroups•com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/16f0f405-3f39-498e-9399-a6050773c4c7n%40googlegroups.com.

[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 3779 bytes --]

  parent reply	other threads:[~2025-06-04  7:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-05-28 17:14 Tadge Dryja
2025-05-28 18:20 ` Sergio Demian Lerner
2025-05-28 20:24 ` Nagaev Boris
2025-05-30 22:00   ` Jonathan Voss
2025-06-02 11:24     ` Peter Todd
2025-06-02 15:50       ` Q C
2025-06-02 18:54       ` Jonathan Voss [this message]
2025-06-05 14:33         ` 'conduition' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2025-06-02 17:38   ` waxwing/ AdamISZ
2025-06-02 19:34     ` 'conduition' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2025-06-02 22:50     ` Nagaev Boris
2025-05-31 16:07 ` [bitcoindev] " waxwing/ AdamISZ

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=16f0f405-3f39-498e-9399-a6050773c4c7n@googlegroups.com \
    --to=k98kurz@gmail$(echo .)com \
    --cc=bitcoindev@googlegroups.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox