public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Simon Barber <simon@superduper.net>
To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Double-spending unconfirmed transactions is a lot easier than most people realise
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 17:42:20 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <53585DEC.3030909@superduper.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <53583ECD.5000105@thinlink.com>

Miners earn bitcoins, and clearly a network where reasonable certainty 
can be achieved with 0-confirm transactions is more useful, thus will 
result in those bitcoins being more valuable. One would expect rational 
miners (or pool operators) to want to collaborate to reduce the 
possibilities for double spend attacks as much as possible.

Simon

On 4/23/2014 3:29 PM, Tom Harding wrote:
> On 4/22/2014 9:03 PM, Matt Whitlock wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 22 April 2014, at 8:45 pm, Tom Harding wrote:
>>> A network where transaction submitters consider their (final)
>>> transactions to be unchangeable the moment they are transmitted, and
>>> where the network's goal is to confirm only transactions all of whose
>>> UTXO's have not yet been seen in a final transaction's input, has a
>>> chance to be such a network.
>> Respectfully, this is not the goal of miners. The goal of miners is to maximize profits. Always will be. If they can do that by enabling replace-by-fee (and they can), then they will. Altruism does not factor into business.
> The rational miner works hard digging hashes out of the ether, and wants
> the reward to be great.  How much more valuable would his reward be if
> he were paid in something that is spendable like cash on a 1-minute
> network for coffee and other innumerable real-time transactions, versus
> something that is only spendable on a 15-minute network?
>
> There is a prisoner's dilemma, to be sure, but do the fees from helping
> people successfully double-spend their coffee supplier really outweigh
> the increased value to the entire network - including himself - of
> ensuring that digital cash actually works like cash?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Start Your Social Network Today - Download eXo Platform
> Build your Enterprise Intranet with eXo Platform Software
> Java Based Open Source Intranet - Social, Extensible, Cloud Ready
> Get Started Now And Turn Your Intranet Into A Collaboration Platform
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/ExoPlatform
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development




  reply	other threads:[~2014-04-24  1:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-22 21:31 [Bitcoin-development] Double-spending unconfirmed transactions is a lot easier than most people realise Peter Todd
2014-04-23  4:29 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-23  6:35   ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-23  4:45 ` Tom Harding
2014-04-23  4:03   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-23 22:29     ` Tom Harding
2014-04-24  0:42       ` Simon Barber [this message]
2014-04-23  4:22   ` Jeff Garzik

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=53585DEC.3030909@superduper.net \
    --to=simon@superduper.net \
    --cc=bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox