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

From: Adam Ritter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 22:44:29 +0200

Isn't a faster blockchain for transactions (maybe as a sidechain) solving
the problem? If there would be a safe way for 0-confirmation transactions,
the Bitcoin blockchain wouldn't even be needed.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:37 PM, Mike Hearn <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:24 PM, Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]>wrote:
>
>> Right, this works in the Bitcoin network today absent any collusion by
>> the miners. You give one miner a transaction and you give every other
>> node you can reach another transaction.
>>
>
> Yes, but that can be fixed with double spend alerts.
>
>
>> Someone you ask to not double spend is an entirely separate matter.
>> They aren't self-selecting: you select who you trust to not make
>> double spends and there is no need for this trust to be globally
>> consistent.
>>
>
> No? It's not just your decision that matters, the receiver also has to
> trust them. They're like a dispute mediator in this regard. You can pick
> whoever you want, but that doesn't matter if the receiver doesn't recognise
> them or trust them. You have to find an overlap to make an instant trade.
>
> In practice if people have to think about this, evaluate brands etc then
> you'd get a very small number of parties because the value of global
> agreement is so high. Then it becomes hard to remove ones that have a lot
> of momentum.
>
> The censorship resistance of the block chain doesn't matter if your double
> spending partners refuse to help you spend your money (because they're
> being coerced). The censorship can just happen at a different place.
>
>
>> To stop GHash.io we would have to take away their hardware or change the
>> Bitcoin
>> protocol to make their hardware useless
>>
>
> ..... or, have a majority decide to zero out their coinbase rewards for
> blocks that double spent against dice sites. That wouldn't undo the double
> spend, but you can't do that with the multisig scheme either. All you can
> do is punish the corrupted party post-hoc, either by not using them again,
> or by "unpaying" them for the service they did not provide.
>
>
>
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