From: bgroff@lavabit.com
To: "Gavin Andresen" <gavinandresen@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New standard transaction types: time to schedule a blockchain split?
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:47:55 -0400 (EDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <21952.77.109.139.87.1314208075.squirrel@lavabit.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABsx9T1uw43JuvhEmJP0KCyojsDi1r7v6BaLBHz7wWazduE5iw@mail.gmail.com>
"Gavin Andresen" <gavinandresen@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to me the fastest path to very secure, very-hard-to-lose
> bitcoin wallets is multi-signature transactions.
>
> To organize this discussion: first, does everybody agree?
I agree. For example, a corporate wallet can require threshold signatures
to disburse. Or for personal use you can have a couple of additional
keys, one stored on a secure device for confirmation and one offline as
emergency backup if you lose your secure device.
...
> I've been trying to get consensus on low-level 'standard' transactions
> for transactions that must be signed by 2 or 3 keys; current draft
> proposal is here:
> https://gist.github.com/39158239e36f6af69d6f
> and discussion on the forums here:
> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38928.0
> ... and there is a pull request that is relevant here:
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/319
For context - I am the author of the latter.
> I still think it is a good idea to enable a set of new 'standard'
> multisignature transactions, so they get relayed and included into
> blocks. I don't want to let "the perfect become the enemy of the
> good" -- does anybody disagree?
>
> The arguments against are that if the proposed standard transactions
> are accepted, then the next step is to define a new kind of bitcoin
> address that lets coins be deposited into a multisignature-protected
> wallet.
>
> And those new as-yet-undefined bitcoin addresses will have to be 2 or
> 3 times as big as current bitcoin addresses, and will be incompatible
> with old clients.
Incompatible at the UI level, but not at the block chain level. Changing
the block chain rules will be quite an undertaking. You will have to set
a block number for the rule change a few months in advance and will have
to get agreement from the pools. I think it is important to increase
trust in the bitcoin ecosystem sooner than that. The current flat
exchange rate and difficulty may be a signal that people are getting risk
averse.
> So, if we are going to have new releases that are incompatible with
> old clients why not do things right in the first place, implement or
> enable opcodes so the new bitcoin addresses can be small, and schedule
> a block chain split for N months from now.
>
> My biggest worry is we'll say "Sure, it'll only take a couple days to
> agree on how to do it right" and six months from now there is still no
> consensus on exactly which digest function should be used, or whether
> or not there should be a new opcode for arbitrary boolean expressions
> involving keypairs. And people's wallets continue to get lost or
> stolen.
That is my worry too. We already have working code for this (pull 319),
and the addresses are not so long as to be unusable. I hope we can move
forward on the existing code and in parallel move forward on block chain
rule proposals at an agreed upon block number.
--
Bobby Groff
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-08-24 17:48 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-08-24 15:12 [Bitcoin-development] New standard transaction types: time to schedule a blockchain split? Gavin Andresen
2011-08-24 15:17 ` Rick Wesson
2011-08-24 15:45 ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-08-24 15:55 ` Rick Wesson
2011-08-24 16:05 ` Douglas Huff
2011-08-24 16:15 ` Luke-Jr
2011-08-24 16:46 ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-08-24 17:03 ` Luke-Jr
2011-08-24 17:07 ` Rick Wesson
2011-08-24 17:19 ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-08-24 17:40 ` Rick Wesson
2011-08-24 17:57 ` Gavin Andresen
2011-08-24 18:45 ` Jeff Garzik
2011-08-25 7:39 ` Michael Grønager
2011-08-25 17:18 ` Gavin Andresen
2011-08-26 10:50 ` Mike Hearn
2011-08-27 1:36 ` bgroff
2011-08-25 18:31 ` Gregory Maxwell
[not found] ` <20110825201026.GA21380@ulyssis.org>
2011-08-25 20:29 ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-08-25 21:06 ` Pieter Wuille
2011-08-24 17:03 ` theymos
2011-08-24 17:47 ` bgroff [this message]
2011-08-24 19:05 ` Christian Decker
2011-08-24 20:29 ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-08-24 22:27 ` Douglas Huff
2011-08-25 21:30 ` Christian Decker
2011-08-26 11:42 ` Mike Hearn
2011-08-26 19:44 ` Gavin Andresen
2011-08-27 1:15 ` bgroff
2011-08-24 16:18 Pieter Wuille
2011-08-24 16:26 ` Luke-Jr
2011-08-25 20:14 Pieter Wuille
2011-08-26 11:09 ` Mike Hearn
2011-08-26 21:30 ` Pieter Wuille
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