The confusion below stems from his
conflation of several different ideas.
I will try to explicitly clarify a distinction between several
types of user (or, "modes" of use if you prefer):
[DC#0] -- Someone who does not upgrade their Bitcoin software (and
is running, say, 0.13). However, they experience the effects of
the new rules which miners add (as per the soft fork[s] to add
drivechain functionality and individual drivechains).
[DC#1] -- Someone who always upgrades to the latest version of the
Bitcoin software, but otherwise has no interest in running/using
sidechains.
[DC#2] -- Someone who upgrades to the latest Bitcoin version, and
decides to also become a full node of one or more sidechains, but
who ever actually uses the sidechains.
[DC#3] -- Someone who upgrades their software, runs sidechain full
nodes, and actively moves money to and from these.
On 7/12/2017 6:43 PM, Tao Effect wrote:
I am now looking closer again at step number 4 in
the Drivechain specification [2]:
4. Everyone waits for a period of, say, 3 days.
This gives everyone an opportunity to make sure the same WT^
is in both the Bitcoin coinbase and the Sidechain header. If
they’re different, everyone has plenty of time to contact
each other, figure out what is going on, and restart the
process until its right.
It seems to me that where our disagreement lies is
in this point.
The Drivechain spec seems to claim that its use of
anyone-can-pay is the same as P2SH (and in later emails you
reference SegWit as well). Is this really true?
FYI that document is nearly two years old, and although it is still
overwhelmingly accurate, new optimizations allow us (I think) to
push the waiting period to several weeks and the total ACK counting
period up to several months.
[DC#0] Yes
[DC#1] Yes
[DC#2] Yes
[DC#3] Yes
Because if a node doesn't have the sidechain's information, it will
just assume every withdrawal is valid. This is comparable to someone
who still hasn't upgraded to support P2SH, in cases [DC#0] and [#1].
(And this is the main advantage of DC over extension blocks).
2. Per the question in [1], it's my understanding
that P2SH transactions contain all of the information within
themselves for full nodes to act as a check on miners
mishandling the anyone-can-spend nature of P2SH transactions.
However, that does not seem to be the case with WT^
transactions.
[DC#0] They do.
[DC#1] They do.
[DC#2] They do.
[DC#3] They do.
Again, from the perspective of a mainchain user, every withdrawal is
valid.
In P2SH txns, there is no need for anyone to, as the
Drivechain spec says, "to contact each other, figure out what is
going on". Everything just automatically works.
There is no *need* to this in Drivechain, either, for [DC#0] or
[DC#1].
[DC#2] and [DC#3] would certainly have an interest in understanding
what is going on, but that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do
with Bitcoin Core and so is off-topic for this mailing list.
If the security of WT^ transactions could be brought
up to actually be in line with the security of P2SH and SegWit
transactions, then I would have far less to object to.
Somehow I doubt it.
Paul