Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks

From: Alex Mizrahi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:04:00 +0300

This is outright ridiculous.

Zero-confirmation double-spending is a small problem, and possible
solutions are known. (E.g. trusted third party + multi-sig addresses for
small-value transactions.)

On the other hand, protocol changes like described above might have
game-theoretical implications which are non-trivial and hard to understand.

The above approach works as long as the majority of hashpower is honest,
> defined to mean, working to stop double spending. This is the same security
> property as described in the white paper, thus this introduces no new
> security assumptions.
>

No. Bitcoin should work if miners are merely individually rational, i.e.
they try to maximize their pay-offs without colluding with others.

I guess word "honest" might have different meanings, that can be a source
of confusing.
1. Honest -- not trying to destroy bitcoin
2. Honest -- following rules which are not required by the protocol