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

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:51:24 +0200

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Christophe Biocca <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> 1. This provides a very strong incentive to always vote for
> reallocating a block if it isn't yours

If everyone votes to reallocate everyone elses blocks all the time, then
you'd end up losing your own coins too, so this doesn't seem like a
workable strategy.

>     a) Requiring supermajorities
>     c) Burning, rather than reallocating, the coins. Miners' immediate
> incentive to attack honest pools is much reduced.
>

I'm OK with burning actually. The total amount of coins in the system
essentially defines its maximum price resolution. Ideally we'd not lose
resolution, but it's less important than having a system that does actually
work. Moreover, this sort of system is like double spending defence itself
- if it does work, it doesn't need to actually be done very frequently
because people know the safeguards work and don't try. So in practice total
loss of resolution should be limited.

> 2. BitUndo gets paid using additional txouts in the double-spend
> transaction, no by miner's fees.

Right. It's indeed an assumption that block rewards matter to miners, even
the ones that have double spend revenues.