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From: "Luke-Jr" <luke@dashjr.org>
To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net, timo.hanke@web.de
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Blockchain as root CA for payment protocol
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 19:01:48 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <201302091901.49930.luke@dashjr.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20130209143325.GA3998@crunch>

On Saturday, February 09, 2013 2:33:25 PM Timo Hanke wrote:
> > Why don't you use namecoin or another alt-chain for this?
> 
> Because namcoin tries to solve a different problem, DNS, whereas I want
> to establish an identity for a payment protocol.

What is the technical difference here? Namecoin ties names to data; DNS is a 
specific namespace in it. There is no reason I know of that this identity 
stuff cannot be a new namespace.

> You can argue that alt-chains _can_ be as strong as bitcoin, but they
> don't _have to_ be. There is no guarantee how many people will
> cross-mine.

This is true of namecoin, but it does not have to be true of new merged-mined 
data. You could very well require the Bitcoin proof-of-work to be valid and 
the master header to be in the Bitcoin blockchain.

> The alt-chain could even disappear at some point. If at some point your alt-
> chain is no longer being worked on, then how do you prove that some old
> bitcoin transaction went to an address for which there was a valid
> id/certificate at the time of sending? If the certificate is based inside
> bitcoin's blockchain then you will have a proof for the correct destinations
> of all your old transactions as long as bitcoin exists.

Yes, if people stop using your system, it won't work. Consider that a "this 
idea failed" scenario, where it doesn't matter.

Luke



  reply	other threads:[~2013-02-09 19:02 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-02-08 10:03 [Bitcoin-development] Blockchain as root CA for payment protocol Timo Hanke
2013-02-08 11:01 ` Peter Todd
2013-02-09 14:33   ` Timo Hanke
2013-02-09 19:01     ` Luke-Jr [this message]
2013-02-11 19:12       ` Timo Hanke
2013-02-11 19:21         ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-02-11 11:21     ` Peter Todd
2013-02-11 19:39 ` Rick Wesson

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