Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] instant confirmation via payment protocol backwards compatible proto buffer extension

From: Lawrence Nahum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:56:56 +0000 (UTC)

Mike Hearn <mike <at> plan99.net> writes:

> Actually Tom is running a page where he shows double spends detected by 
his node or relayed by mine (there are only two nodes in this little 
detection network currently), and it does show double spends that occur 
seconds, minutes or even days apart.

I only meant that double spends minutes apart are possible and that by then 
the sole use of a monitor is too late even if it will tell you.

> Regardless, whether that approach helps or not is off topic for this 
thread. Let's all hope it does and discuss the details in some other thread, 
or on the pull request.

Fair enough.

> Yes indeed, if you want to do high frequency trading then every 
millisecond counts and you probably don't want to rely on watching 
transactions propagate across the block chain. For inter-exchange traffic 
this BIP would probably be useful. I've been talking about the consumer 
case.

That's quite different, granted.

> No, I expect there to be many kinds of trades where dispute mediation is 
unnecessary, e.g. when I buy a drink at Starbucks or a burger at McDonalds 
the chances of me wanting to charge it back is basically zero. Same for 
sending between people who know each other, large corporate transactions 
where the threat of a lawsuit is more useful than mediation, etc.

I wouldn't assume that if bitcoin alone (i.e. without third parties) can't 
be used for medium-high value purchases then it's useless. 

> But for transactions where third parties are needed for dispute mediation, 
yes, I'd expect there to be a handful of well known trusted names for the 
majority of such transactions, and then a long tail of specialists who only 
mediate e.g. purchases of rare Aztec artifacts or other things where a 
generic company might be easily fooled.

Agreed.