Thank you Jorge for the contribution of the Stag Hunt terminology. It is much better than a politically charged "scorched earth". On Feb 21, 2015 11:10 AM, "Jorge Timón" wrote: > I agree "scorched hearth" is a really bad name for the 0 conf protocol > based on game theory. I would have preferred "stag hunt" since that's > basically what it's using (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt) > but I like the protocol and I think it would be interesting to > integrate it in the payment protocol. > Even if that protocol didn't existed or didn't worked, replace-by-fee > is purely part of a node's policy, not part of consensus. > >From the whitepaper, 0 conf transactions being secure by the good will > of miners was never an assumption, and it is clear to me that the > system cannot provide those guaranties based on such a weak scheme. I > believe thinking otherwise is naive. > As to consider non-standard policies "an attack to bitcoin" because > "that's not how bitcoin used to work", then I guess minimum relay fee > policies can also be considered "an attack to bitcoin" on the same > grounds. > Lastly, "first-seen-wins" was just a simple policy to bootstrap the > system, but I expect that most nodes will eventually move to policies > that are economically rational for miners such as replace-by-fee. > Not only I disagree this will be "the end of bitcoin" or "will push > the price of the btc miners are mining down", I believe it will be > something good for bitcoin. > Since this is apparently controversial I don't want to push for > replace-by-fee to become the new standard policy (something that would > make sense to me). But once the policy code is sufficiently modular as > to support several policies I would like bitcoin core to have a > CReplaceByFeePolicy alongside CStandardPolicy and a CNullPolicy (no > policy checks at all). > One step at a time I guess... > > > On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:40:24PM +0200, Adam Gibson wrote: > >> > >> > >> On 02/15/2015 11:25 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote: > >> > > >> > Most money/payment systems include some method to reverse or undo > >> > payments made in error. In these systems, the longer settlement > >> > times you mention below are a feature, not a bug, and give more > >> > time for a human to react to errors and system failures. > >> > > >> > >> Settlement has to be final somewhere. That is the whole point of it. > >> Transfer costs in current electronic payment systems are a direct > >> consequence of their non-finality. That's the point Satoshi was making > >> in the introduction to the whitepaper: "With the possibility of > >> reversal, the need for trust spreads". > > > > The problem with that statement is I trust a merchant that I went into > > a store and made a payment with personally more than I trust the firmware > > on my hard drive [1]. > > > > The attack surface of devices in your computer is huge. A motivated > attacker > > just needs to get an intern into a company that makes some kind of > component > > or system that's in your computer, cloud server, hardware wallet, or what > > have you that has firmware capable of reading your private keys. > > > > With the possibility of mass trojaned hardware, if we are going to trust > > the system, it must somehow allow reversal through a human-in-the-loop. > > > >> There is nothing wrong with having reversible mechanisms built on top > >> of Bitcoin, and indeed it makes sense for most activity to happen at > >> those higher layers. It's easy to build things that way, but > >> impossible to build them the other way: you can't build a > >> non-reversible layer on top of a reversible layer. > > > > We built 'reliable' TCP on top of unreliable ethernet networks. My > experience > > with networking was if you tried to guarantee message delivery at the > lowest > > level, the system got exceedingly complicated, expensive, and brittle. > > > > Most applications, in particular paying someone you already trust, are > quite > > happy running on reversible systems, and in some cases more reliable and > > lower risk. (carrying non-reversible cash is generally considered risky) > > > > The problem is that if the base currency is assumed to be non-reversible, > > then it's brittle and becomes 'too big to fail'. > > > > Where the blockchain improves on everything else is in transparency. If > you > > reverse transactions a lot, it will be obvious from an analysis. I would > much > > rather deal with a known, predictable, and relatively continous > transaction > > reversal rate (percentage) than have to deal with sudden failures where > > some anonymous bad actor makes off with a fortune. > > > > We already have zero-conf double-spend transaction reversal, why not > explicitly > > extend that a little in a way that senders and receivers have a choice to > > use it, or not? > > > > > > [1] > http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150216 > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server > > from Actuate! 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