Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] multisig, op_eval and lock_time/sequence...

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:58:56 +0100

Please don't create BIPs that don't have any actual implementation behind
them. Design discussion is fine but the mailing list works for that.

If I were going to implement escrow transactions in BitCoinJ it would not
matter what was written here. I'd just implement the design I thought made
sense. If that design was later adopted by others it can be documented and
agreed upon in a BIP, just like a regular RFC.

For what it's worth I would not attempt to send half-valid escrow
transactions through the p2p network, not even using the overlay networks
the protocol already supports. A correct escrow protocol requires the
seller to challenge the dispute mediator with the public key to be sure
they actually own it, and the simplest way to do that is to leverage the
existing DNS/EV-SSL infrastructure with a "sign this nonce" HTTP request.

BIPs should not be a place for people to come up with armchair designs,
because a design with no corresponding implementation is likely to be full
of problems. Let's revisit this once I can install some software on my
laptop, my server, and a friends server, and do a 3-way mediated
transaction between them.