Re: [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4

[Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org>]

Bitcoin was/is a disruptive technology for credit card payment processors,
and replace-by-fee/stag-hunt is a disruptive technology for Bitcoin payment
processors.

I think whether you call it scorched earth is a bit more of a reflection of
whether you stand to make money, or lose money from the distruption.

Personally, I think 'first-seen' is a dangerous scorched-earth policy that
only benefits the people who own the internet routers that determine what
is seen first.

But from the standpoint of consensus, can we at least agree that it's a
*node policy* decision, and the market particpants should be free to choose
whichever policy works best for them?

Otherwise, I think the only way to make 'first-seen' work is by adding 
a timestamp to CTransaction.

On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 05:47:28PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> "scorched earth" refers to the _real world_ impact such policies would
> have on present-day 0-conf usage within the bitcoin community.
> 
> All payment processors AFAIK process transactions through some scoring
> system, then accept 0-conf transactions for payments.
> 
> This isn't some theoretical exercise.  Like it or not many use
> insecure 0-conf transactions for rapid payments.  Deploying something
> that makes 0-conf transactions unusable would have a wide, negative
> impact on present day bitcoin payments, thus "scorched earth"
> 
> Without adequate decentralized solutions for instant payments,
> deploying replace-by-fee widely would simply push instant transactions
> even more into the realm of centralized, walled-garden services.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Mark Friedenbach <mark@friedenbach.org> wrote:
> > 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" <jtimon@jtimon.cc> 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 <hozer@hozed.org> 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
> >> >
> >> >
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Garzik
> Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
> BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/
> 
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-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy Benjegerdes                 'da hozer'                  hozer@hozed.org
7 elements      earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul        grid.coop

      Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,
         nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash